144 THE YALE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW [Vol. 33: 113 Committee (and the General Comments it issues) likewise loses legal authority. The focus on consensus is endorsed by many commentators, who are eager to establish mechanisms that mo nitor economic and so cial rights and can operate without the cooperation of pa rticular state parties in delivering reports.176 An international group of experts gathered in 1997 to assess the implementation of the Covenant. Sim ilarly, they reite rated the continued importance of consensus, registered by state practice, holding that “the application of legal norms to concret e cases and situations by international treaty monitoring bodies as well as by domestic courts have contributed to the development of universal minimum st andards and the common understanding of the scope, nature and limitation of economic, social and cultural rights.” 177 To understand this dynamic, it is impo rtant to evaluate the operation of consensus as constitutive of the minimum core. B. Consensus as a Normative Co Government ncept: Sovereignty and Self- I argue that the Consensus Appro ach is no less normative than the Essence Approach, differin g only because it reache s for cons ensus—itself a norm—over the val ues of human dignity or basic needs. In the sense that consensus is valued as a norm for its own s ake (rather than valued instrumentally, for its ability to guide what will satisfy some norms that resist direct articulation or clarification), its importance lies in its ability to deliver legitimacy to the operation of both international and constitutional law. In this sense, consensus bears a relation to—and may be a proxy for—the more stringent requirement of st ate consent, itself the basi c creed of in ternational self-rule in constitutional law. 179 law, 178 and to the ideal of democratic (formerly the United Nations Comm ission for Human Rights) was a resolution on an Open-Ended Working Group on an Optional Pr otocol to the Covenant. See U.N. Econ & Soc. Council [ECOSOC], Comm’n on Human Rights, Economic, Social and Cultural R ights: Report of the Open-Ended Working Group to Consider Options Regarding the E laboration of an Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cu ltural Rights on Its Third Session , U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/2006/47 (Mar. 14, 2006) ( prepared by Catarina de Albuquerque). But cf. Dennis & Stew art, supra note 158 (criticizing attempts to establish a complaints mechanism). 176. Eibe Riedel, New Bearings to the State Reporti ng Procedure: Practical Ways to Operationalize Economic, Social and Cultural Ri ghts—The Example of the Right to Health , in PRAXISHANDBUCH UNO: DIE VEREINTEN NATIONEN IM LICHTE GLOBALER HERAUSFORDERUNGEN [UN MANUAL, THE UNITED NATIONS IN THE LIGHT OF GLOBAL CHALLENGES (author’s trans.)] 345, 347 (Sabine von Schorlemer ed., 2003) (noting the r ecent trend by the Co mmittee to undertak e country analyses in the absen ce of the State Party and to offer Concluding Observ ations on the basis of information presented by specialized agencies and nongovernmental organizations). 177. Maastricht Guidelines on Violations of Economic, Social and Cultural R ights, supra note 41. 178. See IAN BROWNLIE, PRINCIPLES OF PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL LAW 4 (6th ed. 2003) (describing the sources of intern ational law as what count as “ evidences of the existences of consensus among States concerning particular rules and practices” (em phasis removed)); J.G. MERRILLS, ANATOMY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW: A STUDY OF THE ROLE OF INTERNATIONAL LAW IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD 1-5 (describing international law as “an agreement” between states). 179. For a classic expression, see S tephen Holmes, Precommitment and the Parad ox of Democracy, in CONSTITUTIONALISM AND DEMOCRACY 195, 195-97 (Jon Elster & Rune Slagstad eds. , 1988). See also Bruce A. Acker man, Discovering the Cons titution, 93 Y ALE L.J. 1013, 1022 (1984)