[VOL. 48: 773, 2011] Socioeconomic Rights and Theories ofJustice SAN DIEGO LAW REVIEW the United States, for example. In general, however, it is commonly thought to be the task of the courts to determine finally whether a legislative scheme properly respects people's rights and whether particular legislation unduly encroaches on or neglects or undermines people's rights." This makes a certain amount of sense in the case of ordinary civil and political rights. Though there are issues of interpretation, the rights themselves are generally self-contained, and any issues of conflicts between rights are of a sufficiently modest character to be dealt with case by case using some sort of balancing test. In the case of socioeconomic rights, however, we are dealing with entitlements each of which represents a claim to a share of arguably scarce resources. Moreover, these resources are made available under the auspices of the state budgets, where various welfare claims compete with one another and with other demands for funding, not to mention the fact that their availability in the first place depends on taxation, which means that, in some sense, they compete with other personal as well as fiscal priorities that taxpayers may have. Socioeconomic-rights claims in court are not just interpretive, as other rights claims are; they are also inherently budgetary-they have very extensive fiscal implications. It is far from clear that a courtroom is the right place for such claims to be resolved; many have argued that it is not.86 On the other hand, some judges and legal scholars have come up with sophisticated and imaginative ways in which courts can vindicate claims of this kind without encroaching too far into the fiscal responsibilities of the elective branches of government.87 Even so, it would be a pity if courts came to be seen as the main way or the only way to vindicate these claims. If we assume that it is important for them 85. Elsewhere I have criticized the practice of rights-based judicial review of legislation, but I do not propose to take up that general issue here. See Jeremy Waldron, The Core of the Case Against JudicialReview, 115 YALE L.J. 1346 (2006). 86. See, e.g., Aryeh Neier, Social and Economic Rights: A Critique, 13 HuM. RIGHTS BRIEF 1, 2 (2006) ("[W]henever you get to these broad assertions of shelter or housing or other economic resources, the question becomes: What shelter, employment, security, or level of education and health care is the person entitled to? It is only possible to deal with this question through the process of negotiation and compromise. Not everybody can have everything. There have to be certain decisions and choices that are made when one comes to the question of benefits, and a court is not the place where it is possible to engage in that sort of negotiation and compromise."). 87. The work of the South African Constitutional Court has been exemplary in this regard. See, e.g., Minister of Health v. Treatment Action Campaign 2002 (10) BCLR 1033 (CC) (S. Afr.); Gov't of the Republic of South Africa v. Grootboom 2000 (11) BCLR 1169 (CC) (S. Afr.); see also Mark Tushnet, Social Welfare Rights and the Forms ofJudicialReview, 82 TEX. L. REv. 1895, 1895-97 (2004). 805