Proportionality rhetoric and neoliberal rationality in the ‘fundamental social rights’ adjudication of the Court of Justice of the European Union

Abstract

This article studies the rhetorical construction of proportionality discourse in controversial social rights cases at the Court of Justice of the European Union. It argues that neoliberal rationality controls the Court’s proportionality discourse. That rationality operates through eliding social conflict and excluding egalitarian approaches to social rights, which are rhetorically re-imagined as subsidiary instruments of competition and business.