Social Rights Norms

Social rights generally refer to individual rights that require the state to provide substantial, and necessary proactive initiatives under constitution directly. Social rights are also called"positive rights"to differentiate from the negative rights to freedom. We also can equate"social rights"as economic, social and cultural rights because it is widely accepted that social rights are only needed in these three areas.After WWII, many countries started to include social rights related items in their constitutions. What kinds of rights are social rights? What is their efficacy? What's the legal logic behind them? In this paper, we analyze the general principles of social rights by following the normative analysis framework, and use these analyses as the foundation to interpret the social rights provisions in our constitution.The so-called normative analysis approach is a process that starts with a hypothesis and then establishes a complete and enforceable system through rigorous inference and deduction. Normative analysis is a general approach and principle to establish social science theory and it is the most fundamental approach and principle in science of law. It regards the system of legal norms as the research subject rather than the legitimacy of the value. A general theoretical study entails establishing a reliable hypothesis, that is, using a generally recognized system of value judgment as prerequisite, and then transforming the value into a rigorous system of enforceable norms. In this process, researchers should keep themselves value neutral and conduct logic deduction.Based on this approach, this paper explains the general principles of social rights norms from this hypothesis: human rights only can be realized in a human community for each individual's interest. The hypothesis includes two basic elements: 1) the community should respect and guarantee individual member's unique nature, which is the prerequisite to form such a community; 2) the community should try its best to improve the condition of its members'living and development, let each person equally...