136 THE YALE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW [Vol. 33: 113 subjective dignity-based minimum core of rights to food, health, housing, and education may do little to challenge the cu rrent set of distributions in society and may in fact obstruct redistributive efforts. An objective notion of di gnity removes these difficulties. In the past, objective protections of dignity for economic and social rights have tended to revert to the formulaic co nceptions of basic needs. 127 Nonetheless, the objective notion may satisfy broader objectives. A comparative approach may help us examine the broad, constitutio nally mediated notion of objective dignity.128 For example, South Africa’s constitutional protection of equality prohibits harm to di gnity, but t his harm must be experi enced according to some society-wide standard . This standard, which incorporates a departure from the statuts quo, acknowledges South Africa’s “transformative” ambitions, which seek to overco me the legacy of apartheid. 129 Thus, if a class of people adversely affect ed by particul ar social programs which vigorously reallocate material resour ces—by way of a steeply progressive income tax, inheritance tax, land redistribution, land title reform, reorganization of public education, or public heal th funding—feel indignation at t his gesture, the constitutional protection of dignity is probably not implicated.130 If we reverse this application of “reasonable umbrage” to regulate not only the application of overly redistribut ive policies, but also those which are insufficiently redistributive, we may imag ine that the core of rights to food, health, housing, and education are infri nged when curr ent allocations or proposed reallocations of mat erial resources cause “reasonable umbrage” in the population at large.131 Because of its link to dignity, reasonable umbrage at the content of socioeconom ic policies or programs would be somet hing less than an outrage to the conscience of humanity 132 and something more than an annoyance. 127. See Schachter, supra note 111, at 851. 128. Frank I. Michelm an, Reasonable Umbrage: Race and Con stitutional Antidiscrimination Law in the United States and South Africa , 117 HARV. L. REV. 1378 (2004) [hereinafter Michelm an, Reasonable Umbrage]. 129. For analysis of South Africa’s transf ormative ambitions, see Karl E. Klare, Legal Culture and Transformative Constitutionalism, 14 S. AFR. J. HUM. RTS. 146 (1998). See generally RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY IN A TRANSFORMATIVE CONSTITUTION, supra note 108 (a collection of Sout h African scholarship on the im plications of transformative constitutionalism, with a spec ial focus on eco nomic and social rights). 130. Michelman, Reasonable Umbrage , supra note 128, at 1412-14 n.169 (citing Pretoria v Walker 1998 (2) SA 363 (CC) at 406 (S. Afr.) (“[F]or some time to come, all poverty relief programmes, public housing programm es or programm es to extend pr imary healthcare or access to basic education will inevitably benefit black people more than white . . . . It would, accordingly, be s preading section 8 [the equality and equal protection clause] far too thin to achieve its purpose if each and every measure of such kind were to be regarded as effecting [constitutionally suspect] indirect discrim ination . . . .” (second alteration in original)); see also Law v. Canada (Minister of Employment and Imm igration), [1999] S.C.R. 497, 37 (Can.). 131. South Africa v Grootboom 2001 (1) SA 46 (CC) (S. Afr. ) (applying the concept of reasonableness to socioeconomic rights adjudication). 132. This standard, evocative of international criminal law, is not inapt to describe violations of economic and social rights in som e places. See, e.g., Press Release, U.N. Subcommission on the Promotion & Prot. of Hum an Rights, Subcommission Continues Debate on Realization of Econom ic, Social and Cultural Rights, U.N. Doc. HR/S C/99/11 (Aug. 12, 1999), (then- Expert Asbjørn Eide declaring that “[t]he scope of hunger [is] appalling in its magnitude . . . and an outrage to the conscience of mankind”); see also David Marcus, Famine Crimes in Interna tional Law, 97 A M. J. INT'L L. 245