2008] The Minimum Core of Economic and Social Rights 149 embodied in nonsecular religious traditio ns that exist incompatibly with th e language of “right.” 206 The consensus may also be more “declared” than “lived” and be based on aspi rations rather than on traditional or current practices.207 Moreover, a r equirement for consensus fails to meet its own standards for self-government and e quality by leading to the paradox (in the case of unanimous requirements) that if 1% of the community does not subscribe to a consensus, it fails to s ucceed, in which case the opinion of 99% is violated.208 Replacing unanimity requir ements with majority consensus presents its own paradox because of the inevitable t endency to prejudice the minority articulation of rights. T he claims of minorities, which ma y be overborne by majority interests in dem ocratic systems, are a ma in reason for the existence of rights. 209 This returns us to the argument that t he very design of the international system of human rights is to counte r the shortcomings of a consent-based system rather than support them. If the limits of the Consensus Appr oach are different for national systems of law, it is a difference in degr ee and not in kind. It is the pluralism which exists across differen t national (and subnational) systems that leads to abstract and br oad versions of cons ensus in internationa l law. The same pluralism is a f eature of modern cons titutional politics, although in a less exaggerated form (since the diversity of the world’ s cultural traditions is not represented in any single nation). For the constitutio nal legitimacy which is linked to self-government, we rely on broad and capacious expressions of consensus rather than narrow determin ants. There are evid ent contradictions in distilling a minimum concrete content for the “minimum core” consistent with these trends towards breadth and abstraction. If we take a more realist view of how and where consensus is achieved in international and national policy debates, we become even more uneasy. Official agreements are heavily influenc ed by compromise rather than reason. Sometimes, the compromise tends towards coercion. This criticism applies to the field of national lawmaking, wher e the s hortcomings of legislative, administrative, and judicial expressi ons of “consensus” have been long- rights treaty . . . to whic h more than 100 states . . . are party, an international body m ight not so easily identify an actual or ev olving international standard or, if it can do so, that standard m ay be heavily influenced by the least common denominator ‘drag.’”). 206. See generally THE HUMAN RIGHTS READER, supra note 201, at xv-xix, 1-72 (excerpting texts from religious humanism and Stoicism which incorporated moral and humanistic principles, often deployed as duties, but noting the incom patibilities with, for exam ple, divine revelation); W OODS & LEWIS, supra note 25, at 43-50 (presenting examples of religious appeals to charity and the benefactor’s own moral development). For a helpful exam ination of rights tr anslation, including a right to an adequate standard of living, in bo th Confucianism and Islam (the la tter expressed in conditional term s), see Cohen, supra note 3, at 205, 208 and sources cited therein. 207. Kirsten Hastrup, Representing the Common Good: The Limits of Legal Language , in HUMAN RIGHTS IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE: ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDIES OF RIGHTS, CLAIMS AND ENTITLEMENTS 16, 16-17 (Richard Ashby Wilson & Jon P. Mitchell eds., 2003). 208. See also MARTTI KOSKENNIEMI, FROM APOLOGY TO UTOPIA: THE STRUCTURE OF INTERNATIONAL LEGAL ARGUMENT 310 (rev. ed. 2005) (for an exte nsive critique exploring the difficulties of applying consent as a standard in international law). 209. Benvenisti, supra note 185, at 850 (em phasizing the ab ility of the international hum an rights regime “to ameliorate some of the deficiencies of the democratic system”).