That year, two legally binding human rights covenants were adopted by the United Nations. Unable to replicate the compromises that had led to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in a document destined to become binding international law, the drafters produced both an International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and an International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Among those that refused to sign on to the latter was the United States, where it was often viewed with suspicion as a 'Covenant on Uneconomic, Socialist and Collective Rights'. Nor did its social and economic rights attract any significant domestic support in the United States, 'even from within the human rights community, which has … always been assumed to be its natural constituency'.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 147