Fundamental rights are essential human rights that must be offered to all citizens regardless of attributes. They include rights such as freedom of speech, religion, privacy, marriage, education, justice, and fair trials. Scholars have different classifications of fundamental and human rights, including some that see certain rights as absolute that should never be violated. International agreements like the UN Charter and Universal Declaration of Human Rights also outline fundamental rights and freedoms. However, states may restrict some rights in exceptional circumstances like for national security or the common good, though others argue rights should never be overridden.

1. CONCEPT OF
FUNDAMENTALRIGHTS
Muhammad Gulfraz
4437-FSL/LLB/F15

2. Fundamental Rights
Fundamental Rights ;
Are essential human rights that are offered to every citizen
irrespective of caste, race, creed, religion and gender.
Deference
Fundamental rights and human rights

3. Juristic Writings
• Finnis: ‘Absolute human rights’ he says that human rights are absolute
inviolable nature and may not be abridged.
• Gewrith: Describe human rights as ‘rights which all persons equally have
simply insofar as they are human’
• Feinberg: Human rights as ‘generically moral rights of a fundamentally
important kind held equally by all human beings, unconditionally and
unalterably.’

4. Types of Fundamental Rights
• The right to freedom of speech
• The right to freedom of religion
• The right to privacy
• The right to marry
• The right to acquire knowledge
• The right to Justice and Life
• The right to fair trail & trade
• Protection from double punishment

5. Classification
• Finnis : In (Natural Law and Natural Rights) (1980) classifies as an absolute
human right ‘not to have one’s life taken directly.
• Garvin : There is one right which is to all intents and purposes an absolute
right. That is the right to equal consideration—the right to be treated as the
formula for justice provides. For this right is one which is the most basic of all,
one which is under no conditions to be violated.’

6. Universal Declaration of Human Rights
➢Charter of the United Nations (1945): It affirmed faith in ‘fundamental human rights, in the
dignity and worth of the human person, in the equality of men and women and of nations large
and small’.
➢Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) : It stated that the fundamental rights
necessary for a civilised society comprise equality before the law, freedom of thought and
religion, freedom of peaceful assembly, protection from arbitrary arrest.
➢European Convention on Human Right(1950) :
ECHR Protects;
(1) Right to life; liberty and individual security are also protected; torture and slavery are outlawed
(2) Freedom of religion and conscience.
(3) Right to equality.discrimination related to gender, race, colour and religion, is banned.

7. The overriding of rights
➢Cancellation by the State; Rights are recognised and protected by the state
they can be cancelled by legislation.eg, banning of factories in Punjab during
the smog .
➢Need for security ; eg off-airing of media channel during operation of
Faizabad dharna.
➢Restrictions on free speech; Freedom of speech may not be exercised when
the result is an insult or blasphemy.

8. Human rights and ‘the common good’
• Dworkin insists that rights ought not to be violated by the State even.
• Finnis reminds us that we ought not to say that the exercise of human rights is
subject to the common good,
Example,
As in the case of the right to publish some kinds of pornography. An
appeal to the common good would not, in itself, provide the justification for the
removal of an individual freedom.
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