SLP 01 (2013)

SUMMARY

Theory and Politics of Human Rights Although human rights play essential role in the contemporary Western society (but progressively also in other parts of the world), the very concept is far from free of disputes and indeterminacy. It is not just a matter of terminology (human rights, fundamental rights, fundamental freedoms, etc.) used in different constitutional and international documents. The human rights discourse in internal and international law reflects different national traditions but also different premises of the philosophy and theory of law. It is usual to stress the natural law origin of human rights, which seems to be correct in the European tradition. However, human rights became a part of positive international law. The earlier prevailing concept of three generations of human rights has been replaced now by universality of human rights. According to this concept, embodied in the 1993 Vienna Declaration, all human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated. Klíčová slova: filozofie a teorie lidských práv, univerzalita a nedělitelnost, politika lidských práv Comments on Theoretical Aspects of Human Rights Constitutional regulation of fundamental rights is characterized by certain vagueness of the wording of a constitutional text. Therefore I argue that various theories of human rights play a crucial role in the process of their interpretation. In this article I firstly present theoretical foundations of legal relations governed by fundamental rights. Here I focus namely on W. N. Hohfeld’s analysis of legal concepts and dual character of fundamental rights (i.e. rights as individuals’ claims and rights as constituents of law). I also discuss the role of duties flowing from fundamental rights, which I consider as indivisible part of human rights discourse. In the second part I refer to E.-W. Böckenförde’s human rights theories and try to describe the role New Mechanisms of Fundamental Rights Protection in the European Union as Desirable Aim but Undesirable Means: Several Notes to the Heidelberg proposal The level of protection of fundamental rights is generally considered as an important indicator of a mature society. Nevertheless critical voices may occur also in the situation of widening of this protection. This criticism may relate to the mode of protection of acknowledged fundamental right, especially when this mode of protection is considered not as a means to protect substantive fundamental rights but as a means of human rights theories in the interpretation of fundamental rights. Klíčová slova: teorie lidských práv, ústavněprávní argumentace

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