social justice; basic socio-economic rights; the human right to an adequate standard of living; the social minimum principle
Pribytkova Elena (2016), A Decent Social Minimum as a Matter of Justice, in Gaisbauer Helmut P., Schweiger Gottfried, Sedmak Clemens (ed.), Springer International Publishing, Dordrect/New York, 43-56.
Pribytkova Elena, The Idea of the Right to a Dignified Existence in Russia: Vl. Solov’ev, P.I. Novgorodtsev and B.A. Kistiakovsky, in Pribytkova Elena (ed.), ROSSPEN, Moscow.
Pribytkova Elena, Unconditional Basic Income or a Decent Social Minimum?, in
RphZ – Rechtsphilosophie – Zeitschrift für Grundlagen des Rechts, 4, 2015, 377-392.
The subject of the project is the social minimum principle as a set of guarantees aimed at protecting persons from extreme poverty; enabling them to lead a decent life; ensuring their involvement in society and access to shared material and intellectual values; and, in the final analysis, providing the opportunity for their moral and intellectual flourishing.My research will address the most controversial issues concerning the social minimum principle. Is the demand for a social minimum justified? What is its content? Is the translation of a social minimum into the language of human rights necessary and possible? In what does the right to a social minimum consist? Can the internationally recognized human “right of everyone to an adequate standard of living” be considered a correct expression of the social minimum principle? What is the nature and legal status of this right?The fundamental hypothesis of the project is that the demand for a social minimum is at the core of the global principles of social justice, and can be expressed in the form of basic socio-economic rights which constitute a composite human right to an adequate standard of living.The two main objectives of the research are: first, to explore strategies of justification and criteria of definition of the social minimum principle in a multicultural world as well as its translatability into the language of human rights; and, secondly, to analyze the nature, content, elements and status of the human right to an adequate standard of living as well as mechanisms for safeguarding it at international, regional and local levels. The problem of securing the human right to an adequate standard of living in Switzerland and Russia will be a significant part of the research. I will analyze three levels of interpretation of the social minimum principle and explore their correlation: (a) in legal and political philosophy; (b) in instruments of international and European law as well as the law of the Swiss Confederation and the Russian Federation; (c) in the practice of international, regional and national courts and supervisory bodies. My interdisciplinary project will emphasize the interaction between philosophical discourse and legal reality in relation to social minimum guarantees and demonstrate how contemporary theories of justice can contribute to understanding and ensuring basic socio-economic rights.