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HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY
Vol. 39
relevant normative and practical considerations, and it is in allowing for
these considerations that gives rise to the maximum resources dilemma.
Section III outlines a strategy for dealing with the dilemma. The strategy
proposed is characterized by a two-step process. The first step is to define
the social welfare-type goods, services, and facilities social rights guarantee.
The second step is to determine, through a valid test, the extent to which this
level of social welfare is achievable, given duty-bearers’ maximum available
resources. In defining the type and test, the empirical challenge that remains
for dealing with the maximum resources dilemma is then to operationalize
maximum available resources. This is the task taken up in Section IV. With
this description and a strategy in hand, Section V then turns to economics
to provide a systematic way of thinking about compliance and dealing with
the dilemma. The section starts with a brief history of the ways in which
compliance has been most commonly measured to date, tracing the use of
residual analysis in the social sciences more generally, and for measuring
human rights in particular. It then goes on to outline a conceptual framework and empirical strategy, showing how the tools for measuring efficiency
in the microeconomic sense13 can be applied to measure a duty-bearer’s
compliance with its obligation to fulfill social rights.
II. THE CASE FOR CONDITIONAL SOCIAL RIGHTS
According to the contemporary idea of human rights,14 human rights (including social rights) by their very nature entail a responsibility upon the dutybearer to act in ways that protect fundamental human interests: for instance
by providing health, education and housing goods, services, and facilities
to those who need and lack them.15 The interest-based account maintains
that it is the extent to which an individual’s interests have an obligationgenerative capacity that elevates human interests to human rights;16 this is
an idea based on an extension of the description of rights given by Joseph
13. Efficiency in the microeconomic sense refers to the degree to which output is maximized,
given the number and level of available inputs.
14. For contemporary philosophical accounts see Henry Shue, Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and U.S. Foreign Policy (1980); Rex Martin, A System of Rights (1997); Amartya Sen,
Elements of a Theory of Human Rights, 32 Phil. & Pub. Aff. (2004); L. W. Sumner, The
Moral Foundation of Rights (1987).
15. See, e.g., James W. Nickel, Making Sense of Human Rights (2nd ed. 2007); Griffin, supra
note 8; John Tasioulas, The Moral Reality of Human Rights, in Freedom From Poverty as
a Human Right: Who Owes What to the Very Poor? 75 (Thomas Pogge ed., 2007); David
Bilchitz, Poverty and Fundamental Rights: The Justification and Enforcement of Socio-Economic
Rights (2007); Jeff King, Judging Social Rights (2012).
16. John Tasioulas, Towards a Philosophy of Human Rights, 65 Current Legal Probs. (2012).