Review article
https://doi.org/10.32984/gapzh.13.1.2
Constitution-Makers' Vision of the Just Social Order and Protection of Dignity of the Poor: Is It Time to Abandon Sanctioning Beggary and Vagrancy?
Zrinka Erent-Sunko
orcid.org/0000-0002-7801-5881
; Faculty of Law, Univerisity of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Valentino Kuzelj
orcid.org/0000-0003-3028-8562
; Faculty of Law, Univerisity of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Domeniko Kvartuč
orcid.org/0000-0001-5666-3274
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Punishing beggars and vagabonds is a relic of previous, nondemocratic legal systems and it is unacceptable from the perspective of a modern democratic and social constitutional state. Therefore, before considering the sanctioning of beggars and vagabonds in the contemporary Croatian legal system, it is necessary to draw lessons from the historical English experience of the “Poor Law” period. The constitutional concept of the welfare state and the principle of social justice place a positive demand on the legislator to ensure the minimum subsistence to poor people necessary for the realization of human dignity, and the negative obligation to refrain from sanctioning the poor. In this context, it is unacceptable to punish beggary and vagrancy in the modern Croatian legal order. The confiscation of property acquired by beggary is equally unacceptable. From the aspect of the constitutional value of the inviolability of property and the constitutional guarantee of ownership, there should be no place for confiscation of things/cash acquired by donation to the beggar. Therefore, this paper advocates the need to abandon punishing beggary and vagrancy as a relic of the earlier undemocratic communist period.
Keywords
poverty, beggary, vagrancy, poor law, dignity
Hrčak ID:
285382
URI
Publication date:
9.11.2022.
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