160 THE YALE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW [Vol. 33: 113 Mark Tushnet, for example, has sugg ested that the minimum core concept coincides with a strong model of judici al review—requiring a large measure of scrutiny and a hi gh level of jus tification in review ing the acts of government that result in any deprivations of a strongly formulated substantive right. 268 This conception accords with the South Afri can government’s own response.269 According to th is objection, both a predetermined and substantively defined minimum core or one that is conceded to be indeterminate bestow too much power and discretion on judges in reviewing the activities of government. As well as centr alizing power in an unaccountable body, a constitutionalized minimum core concept empties the democratic process of its necessary content, preventing citizen s from entering in to vital debates about the minimum substance of social and economic protection.270 As will be shown, this double-fisted objection—which presents probably the central objection to the recognition of economic and social rights in 271 American constitutional law —can be answered by translating the minimum core into the formulation of inherent justiciability. Th is strategy ensures that the minimum core is so “minimum” that it may have a negligible effect on the separation of powers, cur tailing judicial action excep t in cases of extrem e social and economic deprivation 272 or when onl y negative vi olations of economic and social rights are perpetrated.273 In both cases, judicial intrusions into the democratic branches may be justified and can be carried out by traditional judicial remedies. In focusing on the justiciability of rights alone, the approach that equates the minimum core with justiciability reca lls the legal realist-inspired insights 268. Tushnet, Social Welfare Rights, supra note 13, at 1903-05. 269. For additional insight, see Aarthi Belani’s interview with counsel for the South African Minister of Health, Marum o T. K. Moerane, in the TAC litigation in 2003. Aarthi Belani, The South African Constitutional Court’s Decision in TAC: A “Reasonable” Choice? 36-37 n.169 (Ctr. for Human Rights & Global Ju stice, Working Paper No. 7, 2004), available at http://www.chrgj.org/publications/wp.html (follow hyperlink under 2004 working papers). The counsel considered the Constitutional Cour t’s reasonableness standard to b e a “par tial victory” for the government, because it would involve less constraint than a minimum core approach. Id. 270. See SEYLA BENHABIB, THE RELUCTANT MODERNISM OF HANNAH ARENDT 155 (1996) (“[I]f all questions of econom ics, human welfare, busing, anything that t ouches the social sphere, are to be excluded from the political scen e, then I am my stified. I am left with war and speeches. But the speeches can’t just be speeches. They have to be speeches about something.” (citing Hanna Arendt, On Hannah Arendt, in HANNAH ARENDT: THE RECOVERY OF THE PUBLIC WORLD 301, 316 (Melvin Hill ed., 1979) (quoting Mary McCarthy))). 271. E.g., Robert H. Bork, Comm entary, The Impossibility of Finding Welfare Rights in the Constitution, 1979 W ASH. U. L.Q. 695, 695 (arguing that welf are rights require “political decisionmaking by the judiciary”); Cross, supra note 266; see also Ralph K. W inter, Jr., Poverty, Economic Equality, and th e Equal Protection Clause , 1972 S UP. CT. REV. 41, 86-102 (pointing to the absence of any justiciable standard for determining when constitutional economic and social rights may be satisfied). 272. E.g., Rodolfo Arango, Basic Social Rights, Constitu tional Justice, an d Democracy, 16 RATIO JURIS 141 (2003) (arguing for a judicial role in the correction of extreme deprivations of rights, in a compensatory mode); Robin West, Toward an Abolitionist Interp retation of the F ourteenth Amendment, 94 W. VA. L. REV. 111, 144-48, 153 (1991) (exam ining the protection of citizens against “abject subjection to the whims of others occasioned by extreme states of poverty” and a limited judicial role). For an explicit incorporation of urgency and the protection of survival into the core, see BILCHITZ, supra note 9, at 187-91. 273. E.g., STEPHEN HOLMES & CASS R. SUNSTEIN, THE COST OF RIGHTS: WHY LIBERTY DEPENDS ON TAXES 35-48 (1999).