In sum, there is now convincing evidence that interventions rooted in behavioral economics and behavioral science could play a significant role in SE rights fulfillment. Yet courts have, for the part, not referred to or explored these interventions in their rulings.

# **Compliance**

Courts have limited enforcement powers in constitutional rulings against the state. As a result, the problem of non-compliance in SE rights rulings looms large (Langford, Rodríguez-Garavito & Rossi, 2017). The principal mechanisms for ensuring compliance with human rights rulings are publicity and transparency (Chitalkar & Gauri, 2017; Gauri Staton Vargas, 2015). Although many aspects of publicity are outside the control of judges, others are not. In Costa Rica, clearly written orders were 8% more likely to be complied with than vaguely written orders (Gauri Staton Vargas, 2015). The Indian Supreme Court, most notably in the right to food and forest protections streams of cases, has appointed commissioners to oversee compliance with its orders; but even in that case, media attention and publicity have played a significant role in generating compliance (Chitalkar & Gauri, 2017). The SCI has at times acknowledged this challenge and required state media to broadcast and disseminate its rulings (Parmar & Wahi, 2011). The Colombian Constitutional Court has similarly held public hearings, directed investigations, developed indicators, and compelled reporting, intervening over several years, to support compliance with Sentencia T-075 (2004), which called the government’s efforts to address the crises of internally displaced persons an “unconstitutional state of affairs.” South African courts, in cases involving housing, water, and other urban services, have engaged the state in a meaningful dialogue on the terms of appropriate policy by requiring the development of “reasonable” policies and reporting back (Dugard, 2013; Langford, 2013).

Insights from behavioral economics and the behavioral sciences more broadly suggest novel approaches when courts aim to strengthen compliance with SE rights rulings. First, it is possible to make the implicit targets of SE rights more explicit. When disadvantage takes the form of hidden, psychic constraints, such as low and unrealistic aspirations, stereotypes, implicit discrimination, or trauma, those phenomena might be directly targeted and monitored in SE rights rulings. For instance, although IDPs in Colombia who benefited from Sentencia T-025 were struggling with trauma, disempowerment, and discrimination, and although the court implicitly addressed those problems by requiring the equitable provision of health, education, and housing, the 174 indicators that the Court’s monitoring commission adopted, and assessed through 10,433 surveys, included no direct measures of discrimination, stigma, aspirations, or trauma (Rodriguez-Garavito & Rodríguez-Franco, 2015). Behavioral scientists are now able to measure psychological bottlenecks to rights fulfillment directly. Courts could draw the attention of policy makers to them by adopting them as the intended outcomes of SE rights rulings.

Second, to enhance compliance, courts could require the state to report progress towards rights fulfillment in more salient ways – in media advertisements or social media, for instance, to raise the public salience of SE rights fulfillment. Visually salient displays (e.g., a clock indicating how many days of water remain during a drought) can capture the public consciousness and spur enforcement (World Bank, 2015).

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