The Embodiment and Institutional Development of the Principle of “Respecting and Protecting Human Rights” in the Legislation Law

ZHENG Yi*

Abstract: The 2023 amendment to the Legislation Law formally incorporated “respecting and protecting human rights” into the system of legislative principles. However, the prevailing mainstream view, which reduces this principle to a mere subprinciple of democratic legislation, constitutes a clear misinterpretation. An analysis from five perspectives, namely theoretical foundation, policy interpretation, constitutional basis, normative interpretation, and the context of its inclusion in the law, leads to the conclusion that the human rights principle holds an independent status within the entire system of legislative principles. The core link in its implementation lies in the process of converting the principle into rules, which must take into account both procedural norms and substantive rules. Current legislative practice reveals distinct characteristics: the Legislation Law places emphasis on the procedural implementation of the human rights principle, while other laws focus on its substantive implementation. Nevertheless, the excessive emphasis on the procedural dimension in local legislation has given rise to a problematic shift — turning the structural division of labor inherent in central legislative bodies in pursuit of the rule of law goals for human rights protection into a structural contradiction. In response to this issue, two key measures provide important guarantees for the genuine implementation of the human rights legislative principle: optimizing the position of “respecting and protecting human rights” in the text of the Legislation Law; and ensuring that local legislation fully supplements substantive human rights norms.

Keywords: respecting and protecting human rights ·  legislative principles ·  democratic legislation ·  whole-process people’s democracy ·  2023 amendment to the Legislation Law