On The Harmonious Society And The Constitutionalism

To realize social harmony and build a better society is man's long-pursuing social goal. In ancient Greek and Roman, people pinned their hopes on the "goodness of their city" and the republic to achieve the harmony of society, while in middle ages, people turned to Christianity, and in the modern and contemporary period, the national countries and civil society turned to constitutionalism. Since the old times, the Chinese Nation have been seeking "Great Harmony", (the Confucian ideal of perfect society). And in modern times, Chinese people considered constitutionalism as the most effective way to save our nation and build it into a thriving and powerful one when face danger and emergency. However the road of constitutionalism is tortuous and rough. Now China puts forward the idea of "building harmonious socialist society', and thus provides an uncommon historical grounds for constitution developing, and profoundly affected the development and rational orientation of constitutional system, while the reformation and information of constitutional system can serve as the most essential system prop for harmonious society. Hence it bears great theoretical and practical significance to explore the relationship between harmonious society and constitutionalism developing, transform this political, economical and cultural topic "To Build a Harmonious Society" into a constitutional one, research into Chinese problems with the idea of "ruling of law" and the spirit of constitutionalism, build a sound legal base for harmonious society, and establish a constitutional system which is key to advance social harmony according to the present situation of China.Harmonious society and constitutionalism bear high correlation and inner coherence in their content, characteristics, ideas and values. And in the following aspects such as the expressing, coordinating and balancing of social interests, the mediating and settling of social conflicts and disputes, ensuring human rights, the concepts of harmonious society and constitutionalism both innerly insist humanism, democracy, rule of law, and justice. A harmonious society is the base of constitutionalism, and the constructing of a harmonious society is contributing to the formation of the social foundation and social environment which is the key to the constitutionalism. To build a harmonious society which is also thriving, well-ordered, and facilitate the harmony between human and nature, in the spirit of humanism, democracy, rule of law, justice, honesty and sincerity, amity will inevitably require constitutionalism. It's the basic contents and essential value of constitutionalism to correctly cope with the relationships between citizen and society, country and government, private interest and public interest, human right and public power, and thus to bring the harmony between right and right, power and power, right and power. So constitutionalism is crucial to building a harmonious society. The democratic and republic institution, judicial independence System, Constitution Litigation System, Constitutional Review System which are established by constitutionalism all conduce to balancing the multiple interests of the society, protecting fundamental human rights, settling social conflicts and disputes, and provide the prime System Guarantee for building harmonious society.Penetrating into the unharmonious phenomena in our present society, we can find that the crux lies in the unbalance between human right and public power and some weaknesses in their setting. According to constitution, the law and regulations such as on fundamental human rights, the empowerment and restriction of public power, Constitution Litigation System, and Constitutional Review System all need further perfection. Our times eagerly calls for constitutionalism to transform all those unharmonious phenomena into harmonious ones. Constitutionalism is the only way and also the fundamental way to building a harmonious society which has to be developed. Nowadays, in improving on constitutionalism we should firstly lay stress on nurturing humanism-and-harmony-kernelled constitutional culture and constitutional ideas, and secondly press on with the reformation of political system and constitutionalism with the emphasis on the perfection of the systems of expressing and balancing social interests, the systems of settling social conflicts and disputes and the guarantee of judicial remedies for fundamental human rights, so as to attain harmony in the construction of constitutionalism and legal systems.