2008] The Minimum Core of Economic and Social Rights 125 international law to target retrogressive policies, and indicate when the state’s negative obligations to prot ect rights have been violated. 61 And finally, proponents of the concept su ggest that it can assist in the development of a justiciable minimum for economic and social rights. 62 This possibility accords with the Committee’s suggestion that the minimum core should guide the domestic adjudication and en forcement of t he Covenant.63 The alignment of the core with justiciability is also re inforced by the in creasingly accepted justiciability of economic and social rights in courts around the world.64 We might expect the minimum co re to travel between different constitutional systems in one of two wa ys: as a concept with a substantively defined content, borrowing much from in ternational law, or as the latent structure of the minimum legal conte nt to be given substance via the developments in the domes tic jurisprudence on the content of economic and social rights. Counter to the justiciability suggestion, I will argue that this articulation can proceed outside of the juridical domain via transgovernmental and transadvocacy networks, 65 which are well pos itioned to interpret economic and social rights. Nonetheless, for either operation to proceed on cogent terms, t he minimum core concept must first be und erstood. In the following three parts of this Article, I present three rival approaches to defining the minimum core, which vie for attention, not al ways explicitly, in the mind s of its advocates. These approaches raise t he essentialist, positivi st, and institutionalist dimensions of gi ving content t o economic and social rights, leading to tensions and incompatibilities for those promoting the minimum core concept. Once separated, these three approaches point to distinctive operations—that I argue suggest new concepts—in the economic and social rights discourse. 61. See, e.g., S. AFR. CONST. 1996 ss. 26(2), 27(2) (protecting rights to access housing (26(2)) and healthcare, food, water, and soci al security (27(2)) according to progressive realization, like the Covenant). 62. See, e.g., de Vos, Essential Components, supra note 12, at 24, 26. 63. See, e.g., General Comment No. 18, supra note 17, ¶ 49; General Comment No. 15, supra note 17, ¶ 57; General Comment No. 14, supra note 10, ¶ 60; General Comment No. 12, supra note 33, ¶ 33. 64. Recent case law of the South African Constitu tional Court has m ost explicitly addressed the challenges of justiciability. See, e.g., Minister of Health v Treatment Action Campaign 2002 (5) SA 713 (CC) (S. Afr.); South Africa v Grootboom 2001 (1) SA 46 (CC) (S. Afr.); In re Certification of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa 1996 (10) BCLR 1253 (CC) (S. Af r.). Yet the justiciability of economic and social rights has been c onfirmed earlier, in other jurisdictions. See, e.g., S. Muralidhar, Judicial Enforcement of Economic and Social Rights: The Indian Scenario , in JUSTICIABILITY OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RIGHTS, supra note 55, at 237; David Marcus, The Normative Development of Socioeconomic Rights Through Supranational Adjudication, 42 S TAN. J. INT'L L. 53 (2006) [hereinafter Marcus, Supranational Adjudication] (describing justiciability under United Nations hum an rights conventions; European, Inter-American, and African arrangements; and in international criminal law). 65. See generally MARGARET E. KECK & KATHRYN SIKKINK, ACTIVISTS BEYOND BORDERS: ADVOCACY NETWORKS IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS (1998) (describing the transn ational conversation between advocacy networks); A NNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER, A NEW WORLD ORDER (2004) (extending transnationality to th e transgovernmental conversation); Vicki C. Jackson, The Supreme Court, 2004 Term—Comment: Constitutional Comparisons : Convergence, Resistance, Engagement , 119 H ARV. L. REV. 109 (2005) (examining the transjudicial conversation).