South Africa is internationally known for its bizarre official position on AIDS. Apparently, former President Thabo Mbeki relied on Internet sites to conclude that HIV did not cause AIDS even though this view conflicts with the world's reputable scientific community. Moreover, his Minister of Health, Dr. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, arrived at a prestigious 2006 international AIDS conference in Toronto promoting lemon and garlic as an AIDS remedy. These stories would be humorous if the government's slow response to the AIDS crisis had not led to so many deaths.

Among those at risk were the unborn babies of HIV-infected pregnant women. Fortunately, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), an AIDS advocacy organization, successfully brought suit claiming that the government must distribute the drug, nevirapine, to these women to block transmission of the virus. TAC relied on the South African Constitution's right to health care.

By contrast, the U.S. Supreme Court has rejected arguments favoring socioeconomic rights though it has read others into the U.S. Constitution, including a right to privacy, marriage, and abortion. The Supreme Court has questioned the feasibility of judicial enforcement of positive obligations and raised separation of powers concerns.

The South African Constitutional Court's approach is generally consistent with the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), as well as the approaches taken by a few nations like India. The ICESCR requires governments to affirmatively provide socioeconomic necessities on the theory that liberty presumes subsistence.