Doctrinal Innovation and State Obligations: The Patterns of Doctrinal Development in the Jurisprudence of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

When we focus on accountability for human rights abuses, we are likely to follow the path of certain familiar associations. The key issue seems to be how obligations come to be institutionally associated with human rights norms: accountability invites an institutional (and thereby legal) perspective.1 International human rights law looks like the primary framework for specifying exact human rights obligations — especially for State Parties.2 And the most straightforward mechanism for setting specifically legal obligations is the creation of binding legal documents (e.g., by way of multilateral human rights treaties). In this chapter, I will stay focused on the institutional aspects of accountability but I shift the attention to an alternative to drafting treaties: breaking down the normative implications of recognized human rights by way of doctrinal reasoning. This mechanism relies on the normative competence of tribunals or human rights bodies in consolidating innovative ways of interpreting existing legal documents. I seek to contribute to understanding better this ‘doctrinal route’ of specifying human rights obligations.