Research on the Constitutional Interpretation Path of State Obligations from the Perspective of Fundamental Rights Protection

Abstract

In the current evolution of constitutional law, fundamental rights protection has shifted from the classical liberal perspective of negative liberty, where the main function of the Constitution is to limit state authority, to a multifaceted matrix of positive duties requiring active state intervention. And this paper meticulously investigates the constitutional interpretive paths of state obligations under the umbrella of fundamental rights protection, viewing such a switch as an essential reconfiguration of the social contract for the 21st century. It claims that the traditional dichotomy of negative rights (civil and political) and positive rights (social and economic) is too limited for resolving modern legal problems such as systemic socio-economic inequality, the threat of ecological ruin, and the widespread infringement of digital privacy. Instead, a comprehensive and dynamic interpretive approach must be adopted, one that integrates the duty to respect, the duty to protect, and the duty to fulfill into a unified and coherent doctrinal framework. After making a comparison about doctrinal shifts and trends among different places as well as different regions in Germany and the concept of German objective value order theory and South African reasonable review. Therefore, I explain how courts form the normative content of state obligations by making a comparison of these various jurisdiction courts. It is especially on the deeper theoretical changes from just seeing rights as merely “status”, but now seeing as the “objective value order” shining through every part of law and every state action, even into personal legal relationships.