2017 Measuring Compliance 661 Raz, among others, to describe human rights.17 There is, of course, a vast and divergent literature on the question of what is “the” interest that best justifies human rights as human rights.18 I will not devote any space to that discussion here. Rather, the challenge set out presently is to unravel what is the scope of these rights and obligations. With respect to social rights, this is the crucial question. I take James Nickel’s definition of human rights to be the most persuasive with respect to how human rights are conceptualized in theory and operationalized in practice.19 Nickel offers a convincing account of why human rights are minimal standards, and why with minimal standards come limitations. First, human rights should be minimal standards because they should serve to address the severest of problems, the solutions to which should take the highest priority. If human rights become more than minimal standards, standards for say promoting the highest possible standards of living, almost any unmet social need would become a violation of human rights.20 This, echoing John Tasioulas’ warning, could undermine and devalue the whole human rights enterprise.21 Second, human rights should be minimal standards because they should be feasible across space.22 Feasibility in this sense can take various forms. Human rights as more than minimal standards may be politically infeasible; they should leave reasonable space for national, 17. “‘X has a right’ if and only if X can have rights, and, other things being equal, an aspect of X’s well-being (his interest) is a sufficient reason for holding some other person(s) to be under a duty.” Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom 166 (1986). 18. See, Griffin, supra note 8, at 100–01 (arguing a right to X can be considered worthy of human right status only if it fits within his account of personhood; that is, the fundamental interest an individual has in autonomy and liberty, and can be determined as a constitutive element of normative agency); Charles R. Beitz, The Idea of Human Rights 110 (2011) (distinguishing human rights as those which institutionally protect “‘urgent individual interests’” against predictable “‘standard threats’” within the specific societal context that are a matter of both national and international responsibility); Amartya Sen, Human Rights and Capabilities, 6 J. Hum. Rts. 151, 160 (2005) (holding that the interests which form the subject matter of human rights are those freedoms, both in terms of substantive opportunities and freedom of processes, which enable individuals to achieve the combinations of functionings (beings and doings) to lead the kind of life which he or she has reason to value, the status of which “must be ultimately dependent on their survivability in unobstructed discussion”). 19. Nickel supra note 15. 20. Id. at 36 (illustrating the point that rights do not equal interests through the example of the universal interest in being comfortable during hot weather). Other examples include, John Tasioulas, Towards a Philosophy of Human Rights, supra note 16, at 16 (considering the interest in being romantically in love); Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice 367 (2009) (describing the interest in not being called up regularly at odd hours by despised neighbors). 21. Tasioulas, Towards a Philosophy of Human Rights, supra note 16, at 29–30. 22. Although there are various notions of “feasibility” available to test if and when a human right exists, here, a Nikel-type notion of feasibility is used as a point of departure. That is, feasibility as a “reasonable burdens” and “implementability” test. Nickel, supra note 15, at 79–86.