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The general theoretical foundations of human rights and freedoms originate in the political and right-wing doctrines of antiquity. For example, the sophists (Antiphon, Lycophron, Alcidam) noted as early as the 5th-4th centuries B.C. that all people are equal by nature and have the same natural rights conditioned by it. This includes, first and foremost, freedom as the highest value of human life. The ancient Greek philosopher and statesman Cicero was one of the first theorists of natural law, who noted the political rights of the individual and the right of private property. At the same time, the exercise of political rights in antiquity was defined as the free expression of the will of the individual, whose legal capacity was determined by the presence of citizenship. Thus, the first legal form of human rights was the inalienable rights of a citizen of the ancient polis.
The legal status of man in society and the State during the Middle Ages was predetermined by divine law. Rights were interpreted as privileges granted by the monarch to his subjects. Their volume depended on a person’s belonging to a certain class or corporation and decreased as he went down the ladder of social hierarchy. During the early bourgeois revolutions of the 17th-18th centuries, the idea of natural law was revived.
The representatives of the natural law theory were J. Locke, H. Grotius, Montesquieu and Jefferson. They singled out as fundamental rights – the right to life, security, freedom, property, resistance to oppression. These rights are natural, i.e., inherent to a person from birth, whether or not they are written down in law, and inalienable, i.e., not dependent on the form of political structure, and the state has no right to alienate them, and sacred – they have priority, they must be the highest social value.
Historically, the first pieces of legislation on the rights and freedoms of citizens were the North American States Bill of Rights of 1791 and the U.S. Declaration of Independence of 1776. The declaration stated, “…all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. To secure these rights, governments are established by men, deriving their lawful authority from the consent of the governed.
The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen of 1789 enshrined political and civil rights. In addition to the natural law approach to the understanding of human rights, the positivist approach is well known. For example, the natural legal concept is based on the denial of the role of the state as the subject of human rights, on the idea of their extra-state origin and independence from state recognition. Legal positivism, on the contrary, denies any non-state origin of human rights and assumes the principle of rational self-value. However, the diversity of concepts does not prevent the formation of a universal conception of human rights, the key point of which is respect for individual rights as a universally recognized principle of international law, according to which all states have an obligation to respect historically attained standards of human rights.
Human rights are relationships that define the place and role of the individual and citizen in society and the state, the nature of the individual’s realization of his/her capabilities and the limits set by the state, as well as the ways of ensuring and protecting these rights. At the same time, the legal status of the individual is determined by the presence of three groups of rights and freedoms, among which socio-economic, civil and political, and personal rights and freedoms are distinguished. Socio-economic rights, for example, define the position of the individual as a member of civil society and include the right to property, the right to work and the right to rest.
Political rights and freedoms are inherent to the individual as a member of the political community and include the right to vote, the right to information, freedom of speech, press, opinion, conscience, and the right to form unions and assemble. Personal rights and freedoms belong to the individual as a physical person and do not depend on citizenship. They include three groups of rights and freedoms, among which stand out rights and freedoms that protect against arbitrariness on the part of others and protect against arbitrariness on the part of the state. In particular, these include the right to life, inviolability of the person and home, resistance to violence, the right to liberty, as well as the secrecy of correspondence and freedom of movement.
The legal status of the individual also implies the institution of duties of citizens, which began to take shape after World War II. The traditional duties are: obedience to laws and other regulations, payment of taxes, and military service.
