Right to Social Security

Abstract: This chapter presents a comparative and systematic analysis of the global constitutional protection of the right to social security, as well as of the most significant constitutional case-law across different legal systems. To this end, it (1) explores the fundamental elements that constitute the essential content of social security as a particularly complex social and economic right; (2) examines its historical roots within the Beveridge, Bismarckian, and U.S. liberal welfare-state models; (3) analyses its characterization as a human right from the perspective of international law; and finally, (4) it examines its heterogeneous forms of constitutionalisation through an analysis of leading constitutional case-law from countries in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa.