[VOL. 48: 773, 2011] Socioeconomic Rights and Theories ofJustice SAN DIEGO LAW REVIEW have standing in public policy as a matter of principle, not just as a contingent and variable output of the theory. Equally, from the point of view of the proponents of socioeconomic rights, I believe that pursuing the argument about these rights under the auspices of a theory of justice may enable us to make a better case for them than arguing directly in the way their proponents currently do. This is for the reason already mentioned: a theory of justice necessarily brings together with the consideration of socioeconomic rights a consideration of all the claims and principles with which such rights might be thought to compete or conflict. If the resources that socioeconomic rights require are scarce, relative to these and other requirements, then it is to a theory of justice that we must look for allocation under scarcity. Or if the resources that socioeconomic rights require are privately owned or subject in some other way to others' claims, on the basis, for example, of labor, desert, or wealth creation, then we need more than a theory of socioeconomic rights to show that they should nevertheless be made available for welfare provision; we need a theory of justice to provide a general matrix for considering and reconciling these competing claims. The general point here is that theories of rights do good work when it comes to explaining why each right is important, but they are notoriously bad at thinking about conflict or competition among rights or among claims that aspire to be treated as rights.16 Theories of justice may be a little too abstract for the taste of those who are used to line-item consideration of some quite concretely specified rights, but their raison d'dtre is the consideration of competing claims and interests in a distributive context in which it is understood that not everyone can get what they want or even what we ideally would like to secure for them. It is surely appropriate, then, to bring this second perspective to bear on the first. If it is known that the case for a right like that in ICESCR Article 11(1)7 has been made without proper consideration of competing claims, then the alleged right is easy to discredit, easy to dismiss as naYve, and unrealistic. If, however, the alleged socioeconomic right has been properly defended in the context of a theory of justice, then it may 16. For a sampling of the sparse literature on conflicts of rights, see Jeremy Waldron, Rights in Conflict, 99 ETHics 503, 503-06 (1989), and F.M. Kamm, Conflicts of Rights: Typology, Methodology, and Nonconsequentialism, 7 LEGAL THEORY 239, 242-51 (2001). 17. G.A. Res. 2200 (XXI) A, supra note 2, at 50-51. 779