In the modern world, social welfare State has become one of the fundamental ideas which was embodied in practice in the second half of the XX century. For its part, it is institutionalized largely through the mechanisms of the Constitution. The modern legal science has no unified approach for assessing the idea of constitutional consolidation of social rights. Historically, social rights (second-generation rights) have evolved into an independent system of social claims and have been recognized by States as a response to the inadequacy of first-generation rights. To a large extent, Western doctrine traditionally counterposes social rights to so-called classical rights – personal and political.

In today’s context, excessive distancing of social rights from other blocks of human rights is not confirmed in legal practice; in particular, it does not ensue from the positions of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and the most respected national courts. The connection with other rights, their continuity as a single system, as well as court protection applied to them, puts them on a par with “classical” human rights.

The aim of the article is to define the main approaches of the ECHR to the protection of social human rights based on the analysis of the ECHR case law, and to clarify the ECHR’s positions regarding the place of social rights among traditional human rights groups. All in all, the extent of a research into this issue is measured by the fact that in Ukraine this research has not been given sufficient attention, and this is true both for the legal doctrine and judicial practice.

The author has widely used the comparative legal method of research at the level of ECHR case law, and this allowed obtaining the knowledge which summarizes the experience of the member States of the Council of Europe. The author comes to the conclusion that the primary content of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of 1950 (the Convention) did not contain any provisions relating to social rights, and this could not but be reflected in the ECHR case law. The first fourteen articles of the Convention do not explicitly formulate social rights; however, the First Protocol (1952) to the Convention in Article 2 has enshrined the “right to education”. As practice has shown, the ECHR settled down to protect social rights using several conceptual approaches. Among these approaches, the main one was the concept of unity and integrity of human rights, which are connected to each other via their essential nature. The author notes that social rights were subjected to protection by means of the general protective mechanisms envisaged by the Convention, primarily the right to a fair trial (Article 6) or prohibition of discrimination (Article 14).

Bibliography

Journal articles

1. Lasko I, ‘Rishennia Yevropeiskoho Sudu z prav liudyny u sferi sotsialnoho zabezpechennia Ukrainy’ [‘Judgment of the European Court of Human Rights with Regard to Social Security Sector of Ukraine’] (2013) 61 Derzhava i pravo. Yurydychni i politychni nauky 240-5 (in Ukrainian).

2. Maksymovych R, ‘Rol Yevropeiskoho sudu z prav liudyny v mekhanizmi zakhystu sotsialnykh ta ekonomichnykh prav liudyny’ [‘The Role of the European Court of Human Rights in the Mechanism for the Protection of Social and Economic Human Rights’] [2015] 1(1) Naukovyi visnyk Akademii munitsypalnoho upravlinnia. Seriia: Pravo 31-40 (in Ukrainian).

3. Shevchuk S, ‘Konstytutsiinyi zakhyst sotsialnykh vyplat yak prava vlasnosti: porivnialno-pravovyi analiz’ [‘Constitutional Protection of Social Benefits as Property Right: A Comparative Legal Analysis’] (2012) 2 Filosofiia prava i zahalna teoriia prava 216-33 (in Ukrainian).