Social rights involve a public policy component whose determination is outside the jurisdiction of constitutional judges. Therefore, attempts to directly adjudicate the social rights contained in constitutions encourage judges to engage in activism, evaluating elements that do not really correspond to legal interpretation, in a strict sense of the term. In order to demonstrate this assertion, this article will study some decisions of the constitutional and superior courts of Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Chile, as well as the Inter-American Court, which apply the so-called principle of progressivity in the fulfillment of social rights.