2008] The Minimum Core of Economic and Social Rights 117 It may lead to abstract interpretations that fail to re sonate with rightsclaimants, to provide the much-needed detail of the priorities and politics behind rights formulations, or to gi ve a reliabl e measure for effective enforcement or supervision in positiv e law. While useful in connecting political and ethical justific ations to the interpretati on of economic and social rights, this approach is problematic when it acts to close off, rather than open, a conversation on rights. The second approach, discussed in Part III, situates the minimum core in the minimum consensus surr ounding economic and soci al rights. Under this theory, the fledgling conce pt of the minimum core gains universal credibility by tying its fortunes to the basic—and not hypoth etical—consensus reached within the communities cons tituting each field. Such an approach unites the themes of legitimacy and self-determination common to both international and constitutional law and is consistent with the practice-bound determinations of the Committee, which originally relied largely on the accretion of content from state reports to fo rmulate the min imum core.16 Yet this type of method propels international and constitutional formulations along different and uncertain paths, setting limits on th e capacity for gui dance of each in establishing appropriate—and appropriable—content for the minimum core. The end result is an amalgam of univers al and country-specific cores, whose adjustability belies the pret ensions of each “core” to represent an absolute (and nonderogable) minimum. The third approach locates the minimum core in th e content of the obligations raised by the right, rather than the right itself. This approach has been employed in the more recent General Comments of the Committee.17 Of the three perspectives, the focus on obligations admits the greatest attention to the institutional aspects of supervising, enforcing, and claiming rights, which the first approach deliberately defers, and the second only implicitly fosters. Thus, a division of core and non-core obligations most explicitly addresses the institutional competence of the international organ declaring noncompliance, or of the domestic court declaring a violation of a justiciable obligation, and may factor in pragmatic considerations of costs and feas ibility in assessing which obligations to treat as core. Yet, as Part IV of this Article shows, the practical constraints th at are given prominence within the concept of minimum core obli gations—namely the supervisory competence of the Committee, or the jurisdictional comp etence of a court— ultimately carry it too far from its normative ambitions. After examining each appr oach, Part V presents what it deems to be more plausible alternatives. It suggests that the minimum core concept will always elude attempts at definiti on along essentialist, po sitivist, or even institutionalist lines. Instead, it argues th at a better approach is to reverse the 16. General Comment No. 3, supra note 1, ¶ 10. 17. See, e.g., U.N. Econ. & Soc. Council [ECOSOC], Comm. on Econ., Soc. & Cultural Rights, General Comment No. 18: Th e Right to Work (art. 6) , ¶ 31, U.N. Doc. E/C.12/GC/18 (Feb. 6, 2006) [hereinafter General Comment No. 18]; General Comment No. 14, supra note 10, ¶¶ 43-45; U.N. Econ. & Soc. Council [ECOSOC], Comm. on Econ., Soc. & Cultural Rights, General Comment No. 15: The Right to Water (arts. 11, 12) , ¶¶ 37-38, U.N. Doc. E/C.12/2002/11 (Jan. 20, 2003) [hereinafter General Comment No. 15].