Normative and Institutional Dimensions of Rights’ Adjudication Around the World

Abstract The implications of incommensurability for rights’ adjudication tend to be overlooked in much of contemporary constitutional theory. This paper criticizes the dominant “one right-answer” approach to conflicts of rights, and develops an alternative approach that is better suited to constitutional rights’ adjudication in contemporary pluralistic legal orders. It is submitted that the normative reasons for having courts undertake the value-choices implicit in constitutional rights’ adjudication, and for preferring certain legal methodologies over others, must reflect the role of courts in resolving social disputes in the light of specific aspects of the economic, social, and legal life of the polities in which those courts operate. It is further argued that any theory that builds from this approach needs to answer two inter-related questions: when is constitutional rights’ adjudication by courts appropriate, and how rights’ adjudication should be pursued.