On the relationships between civil and political rights, and social and economic rights

In this chapter, I propose to deal, summarily, with the relationships between interests usually classified as civil and political (CP) rights, and those usually classified as social and economic (SE) rights.2 On the face of it, the issue of the relationships between groups of claims does not appear to be one of great importance. The need to address it comes from the fact that a bewildering variety of positions on this issue have been advanced. The controversy centres around two related, but distinct, issues: the relationships between the types of concerns involved, and whether they should be recognized as basic human rights. Some argue that both groups of interests are equally important to human welfare, so they should both be considered human rights, equal in importance and status. This is the vision that ‘‘won’’ in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.3 The vision that the groups are and should be kept separate and distinct won when the Declaration was translated into the two 1966 covenants,4 and is a vision argued for within many theories of political philosophy. The question of which cluster of rights deserves primacy has been answered in a variety of ways: Some seek to give priority – logical, normative, and political, to CP rights. They are either indifferent or hostile to SE rights, while voicing different attitudes towards SE concerns. The legal system of the United States is an example of this attitude. Most importantly, many Western theories of political justice and liberalism make CP rights a necessary component of the liberal, democratic state, but do not include SE benefits in the order