2008] The Minimum Core of Economic and Social Rights 151 but rather deviations from longer -term and truer instantiations. 217 Lawrence Sager, writing about American constitutiona l law, promotes a similar critique in respect of the retrogression in welfare policy in recent years. 218 He argues that a long-term view can “blunt the force of contemporary political 219 currents” while still paying heed to an underlying constitutional consensus. Recourse to the long-term view leav es consensus on uncertain ground. When is a consensus “truly” given, and when is it a deviation? Are there other norms more relevant to the “core” of the right, such as the quality of reasoning (as we saw was featured in the Essence Approach), in place of the quantity of belief? 220 In the end, t hese realist feat ures suggest an i mportant insight: namely, that focusing on consensus alone thwarts the definition of a minimum core. There is good reason to explore other rationales for the minimum core concept, both because consensus pulls the content too broadly and thinly, and because its theoretical promise—of self-governing pluralism in both international and constit utional law—proves elusive. Perhaps consensus merely popularizes the inquiry. IV. THE MINIMUM CORE AS MINIMUM OBLIGATION The problems foreshadowed by the E ssence and Consensus Approaches to the minimum core point to a third, somewhat different approach. This approach investigates whether a mi nimum obligation (or minimum set of obligations) can correlate to the minimum core. Of course, this approach is not a true alternative to the purely normative and consensus-driven approaches, as it relies on, and incorporat es, these justifications w ithin its assessment of obligation. That is, the more normatively convincing and empirically accepted the definition of the essential protections, the easier to demarcate the attendant obligations as minimum. But that pragmatic connection between sound norms and effective duties can obscure a differe nt set of influence s on the definition of the core, which take the institu tional competences and remedial opportunities—both in pr actical and normative te rms—as the paramount guides in setting the minimum. In char acterizing this appr oach, I highlight these institutional and procedural arguments. The shift to obligations reflects two constructive points in the economic and social rights canon. The first is that a focus on the duties required to implement the rights, rather than the elements of the rights themselves, enables the analysis of realistic, institu tionally informed stra tegies for rights protection: that is, of solutions for “wha t it actually takes to enable people to be secure against the st andard, predictable threats to t heir rights.” 221 The second is that an anal ysis of t he duties that correlate to each right confronts the erroneous dichotomy of “posit ive” and “negative” rights, making clear 217. See, e.g., Ackerman, supra note 179. 218. SAGER, supra note 167, at 158-59. 219. Id. at 158. 220. SHUE, supra note 78, at 73 (“[O]ne must assess the qua lity of reasoning, not m easure the quantity of belief . . . .”); cf. SUNSTEIN, A SECOND BILL OF RIGHTS, supra note 74 (for an application to constitutional law); T HOMAS M. FRANCK, FAIRNESS IN INTERNATIONAL LAW AND INSTITUTIONS (1995) (for an application to international law). 221. SHUE, supra note 78, at 160.