Human rights capture what people need to live minimally decent lives. Recognized dimensions of this minimum include physical security, due process, political participation, and freedom of movement, speech, and belief, as well as—more controversially for some—subsistence, shelter, health, education, culture, and community. Far less attention has been paid to the interpersonal, social dimensions of a minimally decent life, including our basic needs for decent human contact and acknowledgment, for interaction and adequate social inclusion, and for relationship, intimacy, and shared ways of living, as well as our competing interests in solitude and associative freedom.

This pioneering collection of original essays aims to remedy the neglect of social needs and rights in human rights theory and practice by exploring the social dimensions of the human-rights minimum. The essays subject enumerated social human rights and proposed social human rights to philosophical scrutiny, and probe the conceptual, normative, and practical implications of taking social human rights seriously. The contributors to this volume demonstrate powerfully how important this undertaking is, despite the thorny theoretical and practical challenges that social rights present.