Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen

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The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (French: La Déclaration des droits de l'Homme et du citoyen) is one of the fundamental documents of the French Revolution. Influenced by the doctrine of natural rights, it promulgates a set of individual rights and collective rights which are defined as universal: they are supposed to be valid in all times and places, pertaining to human nature itself. The last article of the Declaration was adopted August 26, 1789^[1], by the National Constituent Assembly (Assemblée nationale constituante) as the first step toward writing a constitution. While it set forth fundamental rights for all men without exception, it did not make any statement about the status of women, nor did it explicitly address slavery. Along with the U.S. Declaration of independence, it is, however, considered to be a major precursor to international human rights instruments:

The principles set forth in the declaration are of constitutional value in present-day French law and may be used to oppose legislation or other government activities.

Basic character

“

First Article – Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can be founded only on the common utility.

”

The Declaration of the Rights of Man was intended as part of a transition from an absolute to a constitutional monarchy. Among its drafters was the Marquis de Lafayette. Many of the principles laid down in the declaration directly oppose the institutions and usages of the ancien régime of pre-revolutionary France. France soon became a republic, but this document remained fundamental.

The rights set forth in the declaration come from the philosophical and political principles of the Age of Enlightenment, such as individualism, the social contract as theorized by the English Thomas Hobbes and adopted to the French by Jean Jacques Rousseau, and the separation of powers espoused by the baron de Montesquieu. As can be seen by comparing the texts, the French declaration is heavily influenced by the concept of human rights contained in the U.S. Declaration of Independence (July 4 1776) of which the delegates were fully aware^[2]. Moreover, the declaration was checked by Thomas Jefferson, the author of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, then the U.S. ambassador in Paris, before its acceptance. Lafayette and some other main actors of the French Revolution had already fought in the U.S. Independence War.

A major difference in the two documents is that the French declaration make no mention of God as the source of human rights, while the U.S. declaration affirms that human rights are derived from the "Creator" and that the role of the government is to protect these God-given rights.

Substance of the declaration

This statement of principles contained the kernel of a much more radical re-ordering of society than had yet taken place. A mere six weeks after the storming of the Bastille and barely three weeks after the abolition of feudalism, the Declaration put forward a doctrine of popular sovereignty and equal opportunity:

"(From Article III) – The principle of any sovereignty resides essentially in the Nation. No body, no individual can exert authority which does not emanate expressly from it."

This contrasts with the pre-revolutionary situation in France, where the political doctrine of the monarchy found the source of law in the divine right of kings.

(From Article VI) – "All the citizens, being equal in [the eyes of the law], are equally admissible to all public dignities, places, and employments, according to their capacity and without distinction other than that of their virtues and of their talents."

Again, this strikingly contrasts with the pre-revolutionary division of French society in three estates (the clergy, the aristocracy, and the rest of the populace, known as the Third Estate), where the first two estates had special rights. Specifically, it contradicts the idea of people being born into a nobility or other special class of the population, and enjoying (or being deprived of) special rights for this reason.

All citizens are to be guaranteed the rights of "liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression." The Declaration argues that the need for law derives from the fact that "...the exercise of the natural rights of each man has only those borders which assure other members of the society the enjoyment of these same rights." Thus, the declaration sees law as an "expression of the general will," intended to promote this equality of rights and to forbid "only actions harmful to the society."

The Declaration also put forward several provisions similar to those in the United States Constitution (1787) and the United States Bill of Rights (1789, adopted at approximately the same time as the Declaration). Like the U.S. Constitution, it discusses the need to provide for the common defense and states some broad principles of taxation, especially equality before taxation (a striking difference from the pre-revolutionary era, when the Church and the nobility were exempted from most taxes). It also specifies a public right to an accounting from public agents as to how they have discharged the public trust.

The declaration prohibits ex post facto application of criminal law and proclaims the presumption of innocence, prohibiting undue duress to the suspect. In pre-revolutionary France, while technically one was considered guilty only after having been sentenced by the appropriate authorities, the royal courts, known as parlements, made ample use of torture to extract confessions, and gave few rights to the defense — ergo, it would have been very likely that one would have been convicted and sentenced, if one had been suspected.

It provides for freedom of speech and of the press, and a slightly weaker guarantee of freedom of religion — "provided that [...the] manifestation [...of their religious opinions] does not trouble the public order established by the law." It asserts the rights of property, while reserving a public right of eminent domain:

"(From Article XVII) - Property being an inviolable and sacred right, no one can be deprived of private usage, if it is not when the public necessity, legally noted, evidently requires it, and under the condition of a just and prior indemnity [that is, compensation]."

The Declaration is largely individualistic, not addressing freedom of assembly, liberty of association, or the right to strike. These principles did acquire a constitutional value, from the provisions of the Constitution of the French Fourth Republic, under which, unlike at the time of the Revolution, they were understood to extend to women and blacks.

Those left out of the Declaration

The Declaration, as originally understood, recognized most rights as only belonging to males and did not give rights to women or abolish slavery.

Sometime after The March on Versailles on October 5 1789, the women of France presented the Women's Petition to the National Assembly in which they proposed a decree giving women equality. The Declaration's failure to include women was also objected to by Olympe de Gouges in her 1791 Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen. Women were finally given these rights with the adoption of the 1946 Constitution of the French Fourth Republic.

Similarly, despite the lack of explicit mention of slavery in the Declaration, the slave revolt on Saint-Domingue that became the Haitian Revolution took inspiration from its words, as discussed in C.L.R. James' history of the Haitian Revolution, The Black Jacobins.

Effect today

According to the preamble of the Constitution of the French Fifth Republic (adopted on October 4 1958, and the current constitution as of 2005), the principles set forth in the Declaration have constitutional value. Many laws and regulations have been cancelled because they did not comply with those principles as interpreted by the Constitutional Council of France or the Conseil d'État ("Council of State").

Many of the principles in the 1789 declaration have far-reaching implications nowadays:

Taxation legislation or practices that seem to make some unwarranted difference between citizens are struck down as anticonstitutional.
Suggestions of positive discrimination on ethnic grounds are rejected because they infringe on the principle of equality, since they would establish categories of people that would, by birth, enjoy greater rights.

The declaration has also influenced and inspired rights-based liberal democracy throughout the world.

Notes

↑ Some sources say August 27 because the debate was not officially closed.
↑ The American Declaration was in part based on the Virginia Declaration of Rights developed by George Mason in June 1776, themselves based on the 1689 English Bill of Rights, published a full century before the French version. Few French were vividly aware of these precedents.

External links

(English) The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen - in English
(French) The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen - in French
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in both English and French with links to other texts

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[1] Some sources say August 27 because the debate was not officially closed.

[2] The American Declaration was in part based on the Virginia Declaration of Rights developed by George Mason in June 1776, themselves based on the 1689 English Bill of Rights, published a full century before the French version. Few French were vividly aware of these precedents.

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