During the drafting of the UDHR, both opponents and supporters of social and economic rights argued that they required more resources than civil and political rights. 'Economic and social rights, in order to be fully realised, require material assistance to be furnished by the state', France's René Cassin argued. This assumption has since been challenged, both on the practical grounds that an effective justice system and political enfranchisement require material resources and state action, and on conceptual grounds, by those – notably Étienne Balibar – who have contested the very split between liberty and equality that underpinned the discourse of 'old' and 'new' rights.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 195