Chapter 2 | Page 78 adjudication and a functioning independent and impartial judiciary are essential.164 One of the key oppositions to the idea of justiciability of ESC rights in the judicial process is based on the argument that matters involving resource allocation are better left to the political authorities. Many argue that judges, who are neither economists nor public policy experts, are not equipped to evaluate the most effective policy measures for realising the right and the impact it would have on other rights.165 It has been argued, however, that the question of legitimacy of the courts to ‘interfere’ with the social and economic policy sphere, and the argument about the lack of technical capacity of courts to properly adjudicate and enforce these rights, are all based on misguided notions.166 It is also contended that arguments used for non-justiciability of ESC rights are artefacts of historically constrained choices about how to construct the institutions of the human rights regime and of subsequent decisions at the national level about how to instantiate such rights in law.167 The ESCR Committee argued that courts are ‘generally already involved in a considerable range of matters which have important resource implications’.168 Hence putting the ESC rights beyond the reach of the courts would be incompatible with the principle of indivisibility and interdependence of all human rights, and would drastically curtail the capacity of the courts to protect the rights of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups in society. The acknowledgment of ‘justiciability’ of ESC rights gives new impetus to a general understanding of their legally binding nature and, hence, to the 164 Christian Courtis, 'The Right to Food as a Justiciable Right: Challenges and Strategies' in A von Bogdandy and R Wolfrum (eds), Max Plank Yearbook of United Nations Law, Volume 11 (Koninklijke Brill N.V., 2007) 317-337, 320. 165 Sandra Liebenberg, 'The Protection of Economic and Social Rights in Domestic Legal Systems' in Asbjørn Eide, Catarina Krause and Allan Rosas (eds), Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: A Textbook (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht, 2001) 55-84, 84. 166 Langford, Nolan and Porter, above n 3. 167 Hertel and Minkler, above n 2. 168 Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General Comment No 9: The Domestic Application of the Covenant, 19th sess, UN Doc E/C.12/1998/24 (3 December 1998), [10].