The importance of historical and social facts for the recognition and development of Human and Fundamental Rights

Abstract

This article aims to address socio-historical facts which have significant relevance to the acknowledgement and emergence of Human Rights and Fundamental Rights. The Natural Law movement, with its construction based on Universal Rights, influenced the theorization of Human Rights; the Enlightenment Age, based on which we constructed a critical view of that state of things and its revolutionary character, by bringing up Rights as a defense against the state. The French Revolution, as an episodic outcome in which all ideas until then constructed were applied and universalized in some respects. The Declaration of Human and Civil Rights of 1789, having established in the law the above-mentioned ideas that supported the Revolution, ensured their preservation and observance. Capitalism and its intrinsic relationship with the scenario in which the Industrial Revolution broke out, which gave rise to new movements claiming for Rights, enabling the emergence of Second-Generation Human Rights responsible for creating State intervention as necessary to put into effect the Right to substantial equality. Finally, the Catholic Church, which universalized its humanitarian thinking through the encyclicals, especially Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno, reinforcing and complementing what had already been built by historical, political and social movements. Therefore, it can be concluded that Human and Fundamental Rights have definitely taken root according to the molds left by these facts in a global context and especially in those countries that are signatories of the Constitutional State.

Keywords: socio-historical facts, Fundamental Rights, Human Rights.