126 THE YALE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW II. [Vol. 33: 113 THE MINIMUM CORE AS NORMATIVE ESSENCE The first approach, which I label the Essence Approach, is distinguished by its search for the “ess ential” minimum of each ri ght. This approach gives definition to the core el ements of the right by virtue of t heir heightened relation with a superior or foundational norm or norms. When this is done explicitly, the approach us ually incorporates a justifi cation as to why thos e norms—such as survival, life, or human flourishing—are superior or fundamentally important, and why the non-core content of the right attracts a lesser priority or status. When this is not explicit, the justification resembles a tautology, describing the core content as “the key part” or the “‘archetypical’ understanding” of the right.66 The strongest example of the Essenc e Approach views the ri ght’s core content as an embodi ment of “t he intrinsic value of each human ri ght . . . [containing] elements . . . es sential for the very existence of that right as a human right.” 67 It is the ab solute, inalienable, and universal crux, an “unrelinquishable nucleus [that] is the raison d’être of t he basic legal norm, essential to its definiti on, and surrounded by the less securely guarded elements.” 68 In this way, s upporters of this approach def end the minimum core by the familiar tropes of rights disc ourse, although, in my observation, they espouse a more strident and yet more compromising viewpoint. It is more strident because its supporters dispense with general, broad, and accommodating descriptions of rights, preferring a pointed focus on the “hierarchy within the hierarchy” of t he material interests protected by economic and social rights. 69 Yet it is pa radoxically more compromising because it recognizes—and encourages—the limits to rights at their periphery, discarding the view of rights as substantive trumps.70 In more analytic terms, the Essence Approach mimics the structure of foundationalist linear arguments common to right s, which move fr om the deepest or most basic propositions for th e interests underlying rights, through a series of derivative concerns, each one supported by and more concrete than the last. The “core” of the right is t hus its most basic feature, which relies on no other foundations for justification. 71 This is best demonstrated by an example taken from the right to ad equate housing. David Bilchitz, for 66. Rolf Künnemann, The Right to Adequate F ood: Violations Related to Its Minimum Core Content, in EXPLORING THE CORE CONTENT, supra note 7, at 71, 82 (describing the core content as “the ‘key part’ of the normative content, containing the central elements of the normative content”). 67. Coomans, In Search of Core Content, supra note 7, at 166-67. 68. Örücü, supra note 59, at 52. 69. Participants in the debates of analytical ju risprudence will recognize th at this statem ent favors the “interest theory” over the “will th eory” of rights. Proponents of the Essence Approach (and more general elaborations of righ ts to resour ces like education and he alth) often implicitly p refer the interest theory, w ithout alluding to this deba te. For an exception, see B ILCHITZ, supra note 9, at 187 n.29, who favors the in terest theory because o f its s uperior ability to justify righ ts for in competent rights-holders such as children and animals. 70. For the classic form ulation of “rights as trum ps,” see R ONALD DWORKIN, TAKING RIGHTS SERIOUSLY xi, 297-98, 363-68 (1977). 71. E.g., Jeremy W aldron, A Right-Based Critique of Constitutional Rights , 13 O XFORD J. LEGAL STUD. 18, 21 (1993) [hereinafter Waldron, A Right-Based Critique] (“Sometimes we may reach a level of ‘basic-ness’ below whic h it is im possible to go—a set of judgments which support other judgments in the theory but which are not themselves supported in a similar way.”).