The Role of Government in Allocating Rights and Duties

One of the most prominent philosophers of the past century, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, in his extraordinary 1943 novel The Little Prince, wrote, “‘it is a question of discipline,’ the little prince told me later on. ‘When you have finished washing and dressing each morning, you must tend your planet’.” This implies that, despite the little prince has unrestricted natural freedom; he still must accept responsibilities in order to maintain harmony with the habitat. Hence, a citizen should comply with social duties in order to sustain compatibility and balance with the society, and personal liberty cannot grow beyond personal responsibility. Therefore, every civil right accompanies with a corresponding civil obligation. However, an incorporation of responsibilities into a human rights framework can jeopardize fundamental human rights safeguards. To avoid this government should appropriately allocate these rights and duties. Specifically, government should maintain social control and conserve social order, but the political authority must be derived from the consent of the governed. To sum up, an individual must accept all the social duties in order to enjoy the rights of ‘civic liberty’, but when the faults are detected in the social contract which forces people to ignore their responsibilities, the government should create legal opportunities for society to improve the social contract using mechanisms such as elections or legislatures. Thus, with reference to appropriate theory, this essay will examine the link between rights and duties in a fair society; additionally, it will examine the role of the state in distribution of rights and responsibilities of individuals.

There is a necessity of political authority for the society. ...

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...ate is a necessary form of human existence, specifically; state should be regarded as the spiritual and social community of people linked by common notions of law, fairness, justice, and common interests; secondly, the notion of state necessarily implies a notion of social contract; and eventually, by means of the social contract, responsibility is an integral component of societal life. Thus, individuals should understand the inevitable obligation to obey social rules. Thereby, what is crucial is that all the privileges of civil society have a price, and this price is expressed in a duty to accept civil responsibilities. Finally, from one side the state`s mission is to provide equal and free rights and basic liberties to all members of the society, and from another side is to encourage people to obey the law and their duties, and thus maintaining the social order.