The Social Constitution

Whitney K. Taylor is Assistant Professor of Political Science at San Francisco State University. Her research focuses on the intersection of rights, law, and contentious politics.

'Taylor's excellent book details how rights, etched into the surface of a society and its politics through inclusion in a constitutional text, slowly begin to sink down and structure interactions among citizens, the relationship between citizens and the state, and the state itself. Using extensive fieldwork and original data from Colombia and South Africa, Taylor shows how legal mobilization moves this process along – a process she describes as the social and legal embedding of the constitution. The book fills an important gap in constitutional studies by addressing the transition from rights on paper to rights in action.' Daniel M. Brinks, University of Texas at Austin

• 1. Introduction: the social constitution; 2. Constitutional embedding through legal mobilization; 3. Expectations and transformations of Colombian constitutional law; 4. Social embedding; 5. Legal embedding; 6. Challenges to embedding: legal legibility; 7. Challenges to embedding: power struggles; 8. Challenges to embedding: workload; 9. Partial constitutional embedding: the case of South Africa; 10. Conclusion. Social constitutionalism and the politics of rights; Appendix: interviewees.