Fundamental rights and freedoms

Przez Olivia Munoz

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Tagged: fundamental rights

This topic has 4 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 3 years, 6 months ago by Giuseppe Martinico.

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8 października 2021 at 20:01 #2102

Christer Lundquist
Participant

I was thinking the same thing; but by adding two words after”duty to support” – namely “and protect” – in the line about happiness and freedom.
Protection of its citizens is the paramount duty of any democratic state, and I feel that it should be expressed literally. Especially, I’m concerned with citizens’ individual rights and freedoms, but suppose adding “and protect” encompasses this fundamental function of a democracy based on law and justice.

8 października 2021 at 23:54 #2103

Olivia Munoz
Participant

Yes, perhaps that would be a better way of going about it. At the same time, I wonder if the emphasis, conceptually, should not be on protecting fundamental (individual) rights and freedoms rather than protecting citizens. My concern is that state surveillance, etc. is generally done in the name of protecting citizens. And, on the other hand, if emergency laws, which bypass parliaments, become increasingly the norm; we can no longer assume the democratic content of law and justice. I suppose that what I am trying to convey is that we should be sensitive to the current context and trends, and ensure that the most basic notions of what democratic rule of law entails are inscribed in the Preamble.

11 października 2021 at 10:23 #2123

Fabrice Luijten
Participant

Hi Olivia, Christer and others,

Interesting discussion. I do agree on the importance to explicitly emphasize the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms.

However I would like to make the link to another forum topic, started bij Jakub Jermar, that the preamble might also be seen as being to verbose and ideological. So this brings me to the question: ‘how do we decide what values are so universally important that they should have their place in the preamble? and what should we leave to the political realm or to society itself to organize?’ I think one of the criteria is timelessness, so I am a bit hesitant to inscribe things into the preamble / constitution based on the trends we see now in our society. Which does not mean that I don’t regard the protection of fundamental rights and freedom as ‘timeless’, because I do.

The discussion here and the one started by Jakub Jermar only makes me curious to your ideas on where to draw the line as to what makes it into the preamble. Is there some set of criteria available that can help us to decide? Hopefully one of the participants has some valuable insights on this matter.

11 października 2021 at 23:30 #2126

Giuseppe Martinico
Participant

We could certainly say more in the preamble, but the operative part of the constitution is the articles, where, in my opinion, the value of the charter of fundamental rights in the hierarchy of legal sources should be clarified. That is why I have proposed an amendment to make it clear that the Charter of Fundamental Rights has the same nlegal force as the constitution. This will make human rights “foundational”, i.e. part of the Grundnorm.
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