[VOL. 48: 773, 2011] Socioeconomic Rights and Theories ofJustice SAN DIEGO LAW REVIEW Of course, existing philosophical defenses of socioeconomic rights already do a fair bit of this.' 3 They defend such rights against some of the more obvious criticisms, and they seek either to discredit property, desert, and other fiscal priorities or to show that these are much less important than they claim to be. It is not hard to make a rhetorically convincing case along these lines, precisely because socioeconomic rights purport to address the claims of direst need directly and vividly-and often as a last resort-whereas the importance of these other competing claims-about property, markets, desert, and fiscal and macroeconomic concerns-is presented a little further back from the margins of life and death. Or to put it more crudely: it is easy for defenders of socioeconomic rights to make their opponents sound heartless. But just that advantage should put us on warning that it might be worth exploring the competition between these various sorts of claims from other angles too, if only as a sort of reality check to ensure that our use of the rhetoric of dire need is not just a way of browbeating our opponents, bullying the moderates, and intoxicating ourselves with our own righteousness. On the other hand, I do not want to leave the impression that the disparity between the tone and rhetoric of argument for socioeconomic rights-intense, concrete, and passionately concerned-and the tone and rhetoric of argument for theories of justice-dry, detached, abstract, and impossibly elaborate-is just a matter of personal style as between, say, welfare advocates and philosophers. I certainly do not mean to suggest that defenders of socioeconomic rights cheat on their arguments or sell short the sort of fundamental values, like respect for persons, human dignity, autonomy, and basic equality, that ought to anchor our views about justice. On the contrary, defenders of socioeconomic rights are second to none in their taking these fundamental premises seriously and in their determination to bring out the practical implications that they really have for the concrete predicament of impoverished men, women, and children in the world. They rightly convey that arguing from premises like these cannot be regarded as a game or as a mere academic exercise. The disparity that interests me is not so much in the premises that are used but in the conclusions that the respective bodies of argument are aiming at. Although defenders of socioeconomic rights are interested in 13. See, e.g., David Copp, The Right to an Adequate Standardof Living: Justice, Autonomy, and the Basic Needs, in EcoNoMic RIGHTS 231, 232-34 (Ellen Frankel Paul et al. eds., 1992). 777