The ambitious program of economic and social rights of the Portuguese Constitution and its innovative implementation by the Constitutional Court

Despite the advances that the Mexican and Weimar Constitutions offered at the beginning of the 20th century for the protection of the social needs of the human person, the traumatic experiences of the Second World War led the following Consti-tutions to recover, as the main priority of their fundamental rights programme, the protection of basic rights supressed by totalitarian regimes, resulting in a new down-grading of social rights. Therefore, the initiative of the Portuguese Constitution of 1976 for the definition of an extraordinarily generous programme of protection of social rights justifies a careful evaluation of the characteristics of this programme and, in particular, of the strategy-truly innovative and creative-adopted by the Constitutional Court in its implementation. Important lessons emerge from this evaluation to contemporary constitutionalism, which recognises that human dignity is not assured while his economic and social needs are not duly guaranteed by the public authorities.