They Are not Enforceable, but States Must Respect Them: An Attempt to Explain the Legal Value of Decisions of the European Committee of Social Rights

This Article offers a contextual interpretation of the legal value of decisions of the European Committee of Social Rights in light of the broader debate on the binding nature of pronouncements of human rights treaty bodies. This Article demonstrates the utility of this latter debate in understanding the former decisions. It interprets the recent case-law of the Italian Constitutional Court on the domestic implementation of the European Social Charter from the perspective of the work of the International Law Commission, the case-law of the International Court of Justice, and some recent domestic judgments. It offers some concluding remarks on the possibility of upholding a duty to take into account the decisions of the European Committee of Social Rights.