140 THE YALE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW [Vol. 33: 113 sophisticated reference to norms of dign ity, equality, and liberty in guiding its interpretation, the Constit utional Court has balked at efforts to define the minimum core. For example, in Grootboom, 150 the Constitutional Court refused to rule on what the minimum core of the right to housing should be, citing its lack of information sufficient to make such a determination. Instead, it chose the more flexible route of assessing the reasonableness of the government’s housing policy and us ed the values of the constitution to provide a normatively charged accoun t of reasonableness, so that the government’s failure to cater to all groups did not meet the constitution’s requirements. Similarly, in ruling on the government’s refusal to distribute antiretroviral drugs in TAC,151 the South African C onstitutional Court refused to articulate a minimum core of the right to health, inst ead holding that the government’s obstruction of efforts to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS with antiretrovirals were unreasonable in light of the constitution’s protection of the right of access to he althcare. Reasonableness, according to this standard, is more stringent than the deferential inquiry provided by administrative review, because it allows the court to focus on a sector of society that has a “claim to inclusion in a socioe conomic program” which has benefited others. 152 Reasonableness invites a delibe ration on values that is particularly significant to the transf ormed South African constit utional system.153 Yet the vehicle of reasonableness is substantively different—more normatively open and sociologica lly framed—from the inquiry into a minimum essential core of the right. A value-based or needs-based minimum cannot compete. III. THE MINIMUM CORE AS MINIMUM CONSENSUS The difficulties inherent in ascert aining and justifying the essential normative boundaries of the minimum core prompt consideration of a second approach to its definition. This approa ch asks not what normative minimum should be given priority in each right, but rather where consensus has been reached on content. In th e Consensus Approach, the minimum core content is the right’s agreed-upon nucleu s. Elements outside of th e core translate to the plurality of meanings and disagreement surrounding the right. Subscribers to t he Consensus Approach therefore atte st to a “wider agreement,”154 an accumulation of state practice,155 and a “synthesis of . . . 150. South Africa v Grootboom 2001 (1) SA 46 (CC) 66 (S. Afr.). 151. Minister of Health v Treatment Action Campaign 2002 (5) SA 721 (CC) 272 (S. Afr.). 152. Murray Wesson, Grootboom and Beyond: Reassessing the Socio-Economic Jurisprudence of the South African Constitutional Court, 20 S. AFR. J. HUM. RTS. 284, 293 (2004) (demonstrating how this standard differs from the deferential, so-called “ Wednesbury standard”). But cf. CASS R. SUNSTEIN, DESIGNING DEMOCRACY: WHAT CONSTITUTIONS DO 234 (2001) (describing Grootboom in term s of administrative law standards of reasonableness). 153. See, e.g., D.M. Davis, Equality: The Majesty of Legoland Jurisprudence , 116 S. AFR. L.J. 398, 413 (1999). 154. E.g., Sage Russell, Minimum State Obligations: International Dimensions, in EXPLORING THE CORE CONTENT, supra note 7, at 11 (“There now exists wider agreement on the core elem ents of these rights.”). 155. See, e.g., General Comment No. 3, supra note 1, ¶ 10 (invoking the “extensive experience gained by the Committee . . . examining States parties reports”).