Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.31141/zrpfs.2022.59.146.747
Unacceptability of artificial separation of social guarantees from the general concept of human rights
Valentino Kuzelj
orcid.org/0000-0003-3028-8562
Antonija Petričušić
orcid.org/0000-0002-9826-1174
; Pravni fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu
Abstract
In modern times, the simplified Lockean understanding of human rights as exclusively classical
liberal (civil and political) so-called negative rights and freedoms is unacceptable. Namely, it is
necessary to emphasize that both (largely artificially separated) categories of human rights (civil and
political – economic and social) have their origins in the same normative basis: the inviolable dignity
and guarantee of the autonomy of the human person. Therefore, only their integral understanding
and realization can guarantee the unhindered development and affirmation of human dignity in the
modern constitutional state. Thus, in the Croatian and European context, it is necessary to reject
the exclusive dedication of the American Constitution and judicial practice to the ideal of negative
freedoms, and to look at the practice of the Indian Supreme Court, which, by overcoming textual
limitations in the interpretation of socioeconomic guarantees contained in the Constitution of India,
finds a deeper meaning and an organic intertwining of the fundamental (civil and political) rights and
guiding principles of state policy (socio-economic guarantees). Inspired by the Indian experience,
but on a stronger constitutional basis (the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia does not doubt the
character of social and economic rights as human rights), the Constitutional Court of the Republic
of Croatia can strengthen its own jurisprudence on social rights and contribute to the development
of the sovereignty of the Croatian Constitution.
Keywords
social and economic rights; civil and political rights; human rights; intertwinement and interdependence of human rights.
Hrčak ID:
287627
URI
Publication date:
19.12.2022.
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