to be pursued also in a political context, then the justification for elaborating socioeconomic claims in the context of a theory of justice is evident. Theories of justice offer us principled ways of thinking about rival demands in politics that take seriously their individualized distributive dimension while at the same time not flinching from the fact that they do compete with other demands. Introducing rights formulations at an early stage prevents this, or makes it more difficult, or makes its success depend precariously on complex and sophisticated structures dealing with possible conflicts of rights that, as things stand, many modem theories of human rights lack. IX. CONCLUSION It is an unhappy feature of the language of rights that it expresses demanding moral claims in a sort of line-item way, presenting each individual's case peremptorily, as though it brooked no denial, no balancing, and no compromise. That feature of rights has always troubled those who are sensitive to the fact that individuals live in a social environment where the things that they may reasonably expect must be adjusted constantly to reflect similar expectations on the part of others. The language of absolute and uncompromisable demands is simply inapt to capture anything important about our moral situation in such an environment. I think this applies as well to socioeconomic rights as to other rights claims. It may be said that there is no difference in this regard between theories of rights and theories of justice, for the latter can be uncompromising also: Fiatjustitiaruat caelum. But in fact they are not on par. A general theory of justice purports to take into account urgent claims of all kinds-including whatever claims there are about the wrongness or desirability of the sky's falling. It generates its conclusions on the basis of such consideration. Theories of rights generally do not; their formulations may, to a certain extent, reflect constraints of equality and universalizability, but all too often this dimension of argument about rights is rudimentary, and sophisticated argument about conflicts of rights is nonexistent. It seems best, therefore, to postpone talking about socioeconomic rights until we have considered how various socioeconomic claims fare in a theory of justice. I do not mean to deny that some claims of the sort that we find in Articles 9-13 of the ICESCR or in Articles 23-26 of the UDHR may turn out to be justified. The point is that a stronger and more compelling case can be made for them if they are validated within the context of theorizing that enables other claims, other demands, and other moral considerations to make their best pitch against them. Theorizing about justice offers just such a context. So for that reason, I 806