[VOL. 48: 773, 2011] SocioeconomicRights and Theories ofJustice SAN DIEGO LAW REVIEW one has a right to something whose realization requires certain uses of things and activities that other people have rights and entitlements over. Other people's rights and entitlements to particularthings (that pencil, their body, and so on) and how they choose to exercise these rights and entitlements fix the external environment of any given individual and the means that will be available to him.... There are particular rights over particular things held by particular persons, and particular rights to reach agreements with others, if you and they together can acquire the means to reach an agreement. . . . No rights exist in conflict with this substructure of particular rights. Since no neatly contoured [socioeconomic] right . . will avoid incompatibility with this substructure, no such rights exist. The particular rights over things fill the space of rights, leaving no room for general rights to be in a certain material condition. The reverse theory would place only such universally held general "rights to" achieve goals or to be in a certain material condition into its substructure so as to determine all else; to my knowledge no serious attempt has been made to 30 state this "reverse" theory. Nozick's argument here assumes that claims based on need occupy a relatively superficial role in a general theory of economic entitlement. It is as though we first figure out who owns what, applying the principles that determine property rights, and then figure out whose needs are left unsatisfied and what is to be done about them. On this approach, socioeconomic rights-if there are any-live only in the interstices of property. Some of what Nozick says suggests that this subordination of welfare to property is more or less unavoidable: "Things come into the world already attached to people having entitlements over them."31 He thinks this is clearest in the case of body parts: you may need these kidneys or this retina, but my entitlement to them is necessarily prior to yours for we cannot even grasp my status as a person without comprising in that status a rightful claim to the limbs, cells, and organs that make me 32 who I am. He thinks it holds for some external objects as well, appealing to the intuition we cited earlier: "Isn't it implausible that how holdings are produced and come to exist has no effect at all on who should hold what?" 33 The trouble with socioeconomic rights, on this account, is that they "treat objects as if they appeared from nowhere, out of nothing." 34 Nozick's position is that "particular rights over things fill the space of rights, leaving no room for general rights to be in a certain material 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. NOZICK, supra note 10, at 238. Id. at 160. Id. at 206. Id at 155. Id. at 160. 785