Research On State Obligations

The relationship between citizens and the state is one of the kernel issues in political theory. As for the relationship of citizen and state in the liberal tradition since modern times in western countries, the state is understood as a tool, and in the game between state power and individual rights, the idea of the citizens' rights to limit the power of the state and the state's obligations for protecting citizens' rights is proposed. The rights of citizens require the existence of thestate, and the obligations of state require the power of state. Analyzing the relationship between state and citizens from the perspective of citizen's rights and state's obligations is necessary to demonstrate the significance of the existence of state for the citizens. In the theoretical construction of modern state, facing the lack of legitimacy of the traditional state, enlightenment thinkers reconstructed the idea of society and the state through the logic of social contract. As for the relationship between the citizen and state, they thought that the state starts from natural rights born with the people, and the legitimacy of the state comes from theconsent of the people. Hobbes claims that the state's obligation is to keep peaceand common defense, and Locke takes the obligations as protection for life, liberty and property rights. Their thoughts established the basis for the modern ideaof the relationship between citizen's rights and state's obligations. The natural rights a priori become institutionalized as citizens' rights protected by state throughbeing written in constitutions. Along with the victory of the bourgeois revolution, the thinking of social contract and natural rights faded away, and the early utilitarian thinkers replaced the natural rights with legal rights. Legal rights thinking lost prior criticalness and focused more on the functioning of the state. They take the state as a tool for the greatest happiness of the people and justify the state by its obligation for this end. Mill's thought on liberty set a new border for the obligations of the state, which established a basis for the state's obligation to protect citizen's social rights as positive rights. Whether the natural right or legal rights, the main contents of rights are the property rights,rights of life, rightsto vote and so on. The main concern of state obligation is negative obligationwhich emphasizes the limit of the exercise of state power, and the liberty is more of a negative defensive right. For the relationship between the citizen and thestate, the rights mainly present as the limitation of the power of the state, protection of civil rights from the public power, the protection of free market, and thestate's protection of the basic rights such as the personal liberty and the right to vote.After the world warâ…¡, the modern people's basic rights system is established. According to social justice and the limitation of the market, a series of socialrights are written in the constitutions, which become the inalienable basic rightsof citizens. Liberal scholars debated about social rights and welfare vehemently,some against the welfare state while others in favor of the social rights. In thisrespect, the study on state obligation of the German public law scholars basedon the dual properties of citizen's rights have great value for our inquiry of theprotection and realization of social rights. In short, that the state's obligation ofcitizens to achieve autonomy has become the consensus of the world.The achievements the welfare state have reached and the problems that havebeen exposed enlightens the exploration of the relationship between state and citizens. The early modern civil rights depended on natural right a priori, then changed to depend on legal rights, and at present on "the dignity of man", according to which the rights are derived from the intrinsic dignity and value of human.The thinking of state obligation developed from the single negative liberty defense rights to both liberties and social rights. Along with emphasizing the obligations of the state, the balance between citizens' personal rights and obligations issought to solve the problem caused by excessive rights of citizen for the execution of state obligations.Finally, in the ever-changing days of human rights, more and more constitutions have accepted the obligation of state to protect the citizens'right. That a series of international and regional human rights convention are signed makes the states acknowledge the both inner and international obligation of protecting the cit izens'rights. The extention of the scope of human rights requires new obligations from the states. The development of globalization and the protection of the international human rights set limits and raise challenges to the traditional sovereign state. Faced with challenges, the sovereign state can prove the legitimacy of its existence only by protecting the human rights. Therefore, states have obligations to bring human rights into the state's legal system prudently to make human rights protected by the states, to ensure the gradual realization of human rights inthe way of setting multi-layer state obligations, and to cooperate with non-stateorganizations to realize it's obligations to its citizens'rights and human rights.