INTERPRETATION OF THE MECHANISM OF INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE RIGHTS IN LIBERAL PHILOSOPHICAL AND LEGAL THOUGHT

Abstract

A complex character of current reforms requires new scientific-theoretical studies of a systematic development of the mechanism that ensures human rights adherence. The study of the problems of human rights adherence is topical because it correlates with the state mission to guarantee these rights and with its concrete actions to realize them. Purpose of the article is to analyze liberal scientific-theoretical approaches to determination of human rights, their system, and the mechanism of individual and collective human rights adherence. Results. The author maintains that classical liberal approach to the very meaning of human rights is based on the idea of individual freedom and individual rights recognition, not restricted by the state. Liberal theoreticians realized that by adhering each individual’s interests and being subjected to the principle of human rights priority, the state can violate the rights of the community as a whole. And vice versa, attempting to protect the rights of the community, the state can violate the rights of individual. The author holds that community rights are closely connected with the system of human rights, because both the study of subjective rights and the specification of community rights presuppose a person, considered in the first case as a separate individual and in the second case as a member of a collective. Originality. Generalization of liberal scientific-theoretical approaches in the field of human rights allowed the author to maintain that the concept of human rights adherence was understood as a complex of systemic approaches, based on regulatory principles of freedom, justice and fairness, as well as on the state power guarantee of human rights protection. Conclusion. The analysis of liberal interpretation of the mechanism of the individual and collective human rights adherence results in the following conclusions: 1) among the subjects of these or those rights, more and more often not only an individual and the state, but also social communities are singled out; 2) community rights turn out to be closely connected with the system of human rights, because both the study of subjective rights and the specification of community rights presuppose a person, considered in the first case as a separate individual and in the second case as a member of a collective. 3) in correlations between rights and freedoms of a person and a citizen and rights and freedoms of any social formation, priority will be with rights and freedoms of a person and a citizen.