Consolidating an integrated rights approach: socio-economic constitutional justice in Africa

This paper makes the claim that constitutional positivism rejection of both the judicial incorporation of international human rights norms and the relevance of unenumerated-rights provisions poses a challenge to the conception of law as a moral ideal. It also strangles the possibility of a comprehensive rights regime for legal systems in developing countries like Ghana and Nigeria. It reduces to the periphery a conception of law as an aspirational moral ideal for society. By retaining the positivist approach in this increasingly globalised world, the result will be not only to obfuscate a holistic understanding of constitutions, but also to risk the violation of major international human rights norms that are part of the post-war global human rights constituency. This would deepen the plight of the vulnerable and create a dominant legal discourse that will reduce socio-economic rights to mere non-justiciable public policies in Ghana and Nigeria.