Modern welfare democracies developed different approaches to social rights. This paper briefly reviews the different models for the institutionalization of social rights as fundamental rights in modern democracies. In Hungary, the approach to social security has been significantly transformed by the Fundamental Law. For this reason, the paper reviews the approach of the Hungarian constitutional system to the right to social security between 1989 and 2011 and introduces the current position of social rights in the Hungarian legal system. This is done through and assessment of the provisions of the Fundamental Law and the current case-law of the Constitutional Court of Hungary.