Digital Commons Network^™

Book Review: Women Under The Law: The False Promise Of Human Rights, S. I. Strong

Faculty Publications

Though McColgan's book promises much, it fails to persuade the reader for several reasons. First, a number of the examples used to demonstrate the inferiority of entrenched rights actually suggest the opposite. The second reason why McColgan fails to persuade results from her forcing constitutional arguments where there are none. The third problem with this book is its failure to extrapolate its arguments about women to other disadvantaged groups.

Despite these shortcomings, there is much in McColgan's book to recommend it. Her prose is fluid, her presentation of US and Canadian law, particularly regarding abortion, is extensive, and her arguments …

A Constitutional Confluence: American ‘State Action’ Law And The Application Of South Africa’S Socioeconomic Rights Guarantees To Private Actors, Stephen Ellmann

Articles & Chapters

As constitutional protection of human rights expands around the world, the question of whether constitutional rights should protect people not only against state action but also against the conduct of private actors is once again timely. Few nations have so broadly, or so ambiguously, endorsed the application of constitutional guarantees to constrain private conduct (known outside the United States as "horizontality") as South Africa. The constitution approved in 1996 applies fully and without qualification to all "organs of state," and this term is defined in section 239 in potentially very broad terms, notably embracing "any other functionary or institution ... …