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Unit 6: Socio-Economic Bases and Salient Features of the Constitutions

Fundamental Rights and Duties Notes
Like the previous Constitution, the new Constitution contains a long list of fundamental rights
and duties of the citizens. The notable point in this direction is that the number of fundamental
rights and duties has been further enhanced. The fundamental rights may be enumerated as
under:
1. Citizenship to all Chinese nationals and equality before law,
2. Right to vote and seek election for every citizen above 18 years of age without any
discrimination,
3. Freedom of speech, assembly, association and demonstration,
4. Religious freedom without foreign domination over religious bodies and affairs,
5. Personal freedom, no arrest without approval of People’s Procuratorate.
6. Inviolability of personal dignity, prohibition of insult, libel, false incrimination,
7. Inviolability of home, prohibition of unlawful search,
8. Protection of private correspondence except in cases relating to public security or investigation
of a criminal charge,
9. Right to criticise administration, lodge complaints against a public servant and make
suggestions for streamlining administration.
10. Right to work, State to provide employment and improve working conditions.
11. Right to rest, State to give vacation and prescribe working hours,
12. Right to insurance allowance after retirement,
13. Right to material assistance in old age, illness, physical disablement, particularly for soldiers,
destitutes and martyrs,
14. Right to education for all-round development of personality.
15. Right to pursue scientific research and literary and artistic activities,
16. Equality of sex, equal pay for men and women for equal work.
17. State protection to marriages and family life, and
18. State protection to the rights and interests of the Chinese living in the country or abroad.
The fundamental duties of the citizens are:
1. To work and cultivate labour emulation.
2. To observe family planning, parents’ duty to look after their children and children’s duty to
take care of their parents in old age or in needy circumstances.
Swiss Constitutionalism

Two strong impressions may be gathered from what we have said. First, democracy with its
offshoots in the spheres of liberalism and federalism is the basic touchstone of the Swiss political
system. Second, the history of Swiss political institutions is deceptively long owing to the fact that
the people of this country did not live under a strong and unified government until late in the
eighteenth century. Though the Swiss Confederation being the oldest of the existing federal states
of the world and founded in the successful struggle of three districts called the Forest cantons
against the over-lordship of Austria in the 13 century,it expanded to 13 States (cantons) when it
th
was recognised as sovereign and independent by the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648. It was by all
means a loose league of States with no strong central power at that time. And so it continued to
have its chequered career through the storms and confusion of the French Revolution and
Napoleonic Wars so much so that even in the general settlement of 1815 it “did not find its final
basis of stability. It was still too loose, as was shown in a short civil war begun in 1847 by 7 Roman
Catholic Cantons (Sonderbund) which, like the Southern Confederacy in the United States in 1861,
attempted to secede from the general body. Revision of the Constitution immediately followed the
defeat of the seceding cantons, and the constitution of 1848 transformed the old confederation

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