[VoL. 48: 773, 2011] SocioeconomicRights and Theories ofJustice SAN DIEGO LAW REVIEW any important pitfalls and oversimplifications that it requires us to steer clear of. VIII. JUSTICE AND PUBLIC POLICY In Rawls's theory and in other theories of justice, there is considerable distance between the models that the theory uses and the principles that it generates, on the one hand, and particular policy recommendations, on the other. (This is as true of nonideal theory as of ideal theory. There is likely to be considerable distance between the theory of what Rawls calls partial-compliance or the theory of what Nozick calls rectification, on the one hand, and particular policy recommendations, on the other.) How is this distance to be navigated? There are two ways of answering. One is to consider the substantive reasoning that is involved in using principles of justice to generate public policy recommendations. The other is to consider the institutional processes by which this reasoning is actually conducted. Substantively, we should try to ensure that the route taken from abstract principles to particular policy recommendations passes through a consideration of the way in which the laws and institutions impacting people operate as a whole. We know that what we do about health care, for example, may affect employment opportunities, or the quality and fairness of the provision that is made for public education may determine how badly the impoverishment of certain families affects the prospects and opportunities for children. I think John Rawls is right to insist that the subject of justice is the basic structure of society taken as a whole and considered in respect of the impact it has as a system on the life prospects of each individual.84 Socioeconomic rights, as commonly formulated, do not take this perspective. Instead they deal, in what I have said is a sort of line-item way, with particular areas of public policy-with education, social security, health care, provision for the very poor, and so on-each area with its right or set of rights. A list of socioeconomic rights does not have the capacity that a theory of justice has to consider and evaluate the net impact that the basic structure 83. There may also be some distance between socioeconomic rights-formulated as human rights or constitutional rights-and social policy recommendations: an actual system of welfare provision, however generous, is much more than just a positivization of propositions like Article 25(1) of the UDHR or Article 11(1) of the ICESCR. But the distance is likely to be much less in this case. 84. RAWLS, supra note 4, at 6-10. 803