The Principle of Freedom in the Law of Democratic Country Cover Image

Laisvės principas demokratinės valstybės teisėje
The Principle of Freedom in the Law of Democratic Country

Author(s): Daiva Petrėnaitė, Saulius Arlauskas
Subject(s): Law, Constitution, Jurisprudence
Published by: Mykolas Romeris University
Keywords: freedom; autonomy; negative and positive liberty; natural law; rights; responsibility; obligation

Summary/Abstract: Although the need of freedom is definite, the concept of individual freedom, while being interpreted with legal terms, causes not only theoretical, but also practical problems. The observed two extremes of freedom are defined as any human self-expression as well as the license, where the state power is generally attributed to disregard personal freedom. In this article the freedom of expression and state enforcement jurisdiction dichotomy are addressed by discussing positive and negative conceptions of freedom and the relationship between the interpretations of political liberalism and Kant and Hegel‘s philosophies. This paper aims to prove that the positive liberty is the assumption of the negative liberty. The paper based on Hegel‘s philosophy shows that freedom is the characteristic of human nature to seek identity. It is also argued that human identity can take many forms and, therefore, a person has a number of inherent rights and liberties. It is human psycho-physical identity that provides the right to life and health care; human creative identity, providing the right to privacy and freedom of occupation; human moral identity, which provides the right of dignity, and the moral autonomy of person’s social and political identity, providing the political and social rights and freedoms. This article concludes that while a person uses the given rights with integrity and the state is limiting people’s arbitrariness, there is no conflict between the freedom and state violation.

  • Issue Year: 20/2013
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 407-428
  • Page Count: 22
  • Language: Lithuanian