The final chapter draws out the implications of this study of constitutional embedding for how citizens access to social goods around the world and how scholars ought to study constitutional law and legal mobilization. Though not without important limits, the introduction of social constitutionalism to Colombia has resulted in tangible material gains for many citizens and generated new possibilities for citizens to contest the conditions of their lives.

Chapter 7 focuses on overt, political efforts to confront social constitutionalism and unravel rights protections. Following the introduction of the 1991 Constitution, established elites within the judiciary, the executive, and the legislature bristled at the changing political and legal landscape. They attempted to stymie those changes in various ways, primarily seeking to disempower the newly created Constitutional Court and limit the newly created tutela procedure. The popularity of the Constitutional Court and the tutela procedure – and continued legal mobilization using the tutela procedure – however, meant that these efforts to dislodge social constitutionalism in Colombia failed.

Chapter 8 turns to the labor of law, or the difficulty of keeping up with the daily work that underpins this legal order. While Constitutional Court judges have garnered substantial attention, lower-court judges are tasked with the majority of the work of social constitutionalism in Colombia. They are the ones who have reviewed each of the nearly eight million tutela claims that have been filed since 1992. Many of these lower-court judges report that they feel overworked and underresourced. Material and normative pressures, thus far, have combined to ensure that these judges continue to keep up with the labor of social constitutionalism.

Chapter 5 explores legal embedding in Colombia. It tracks why and how Colombian judges – both at the Constitutional Court level and the lower court level – came to be receptive to the new constitutional order, especially claims through the tutela procedure, even when those claims appeared to be beyond its formal scope. The combination of repeated exposure to particular kinds of legal claims in the formal legal sphere and exposure to the problems those claims implicate in everyday life seems to drive judicial receptivity. Judges are particularly receptive to claims when they interpret them as consonant with contemporary socio-legal values.

Chapter 9 extends the argument of this book to the case of the 1996 South African Constitution, demonstrating the usefulness of examining the contours and limits of constitutional embeddedness beyond the Colombian context. The South African case is one of partial constitutional embedding, where legal embedding significantly outpaced social embedding. This comparative examination probes different ways in which constitutional embedding can occur in practice, and it helps to show how constitutional embedding is not a necessary or inevitable phenomenon.

Chapter 1 provides an overview of the core argument and empirical approach of the book. It also situates social constitutionalism with respect to other visions of constitutional law (including liberal and illiberal constitutionalism), describes how social constitutionalism rose in prominence alongside the emergence of neoliberalism, and details what is at stake with the embedding (or lack of embedding) of social constitutions.

Chapter 4 tracks how the tutela procedure came to attain a central place in Colombian life, as people were inundated with opportunities to learn about the new constitution, including through media campaigns, popular television shows, board games, and comics. Over time, the tutela became “vernacularized,” and Colombians not only talked about the tutela procedure but transformed the word tutela in several different verb forms. Colombians developed a set of beliefs about the possibilities created by the new constitution, and these beliefs – whether accurate or inaccurate in relation to the constitutional text – drove claim-making using the tutela procedure, which in turn ensured the social embedding of the constitution.

Chapter 3 provides the backdrop of constitutionalism in Colombia, demonstrating that although many sectors of society sought dramatic legal change with the 1991 Constitution, few imagined the breadth of the social changes that would come with that legal text. It tracks how substantive social constitutionalism and the creation of new access mechanisms, most importantly the tutela procedure, emerged. It closes with an introduction to early legal claim-making under the 1991 Constitution.

Chapter 2 introduces the idea of “constitutional embedding” and describes how legal mobilization can put into motion processes that result in the embedding of social constitutionalism. Constitutional embedding occurs along two dimensions: social and legal. Where social and legal embedding reinforce one another, constitutional embedding will be particularly robust. Where they do not, constitutional embedding will be vulnerable to challenges related to the scope of the law, concerns of powerful actors, and the workload judges must navigate. Each type of challenge can derail both social and legal embeddedness, and, as a result, limit the potential for social constitutionalism to translate into gains in real access to social welfare goods. Legal mobilization can catalyze constitutional embedding, as it facilitates the social construction of legal grievances and the development of judicial receptivity to particular kind of claims, in the process shaping views about the law.