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The Roman concept of the rights of the man observed through the prism of contemporary human rights
Stefanović, Nenad
Crevar, Tamara
Varađanin, Tanja
Abstract: The subject of this paper is a comparative presentation of basic civil and human rights in the long period of the Roman Empire, throughout different eras of duration. The goal of the research is to analyze legal, historical and scientific texts, and by using analytical, deductive, comparative and historical scientific methods, to determine whether the civil rights of some layers of society in ancient Rome, from different periods of the development of the Roman state, influenced the emergence and interpretation of the modern term and the concept of human rights. From Roman citizens (cives), and a wide range of associated rights, through other classes of free society (peregrines, clients and Latins), all the way to slaves, in the sense of “things that speak” (Instrumentum vocale), and not human beings, Roman law defined the social status of its citizens and determined their position on the social ladder. In the paper, the authors will try to find the correlation and origins of the rights of the men defined in the ancient period and human rights created after the Second World War, defined in the General Declaration on Human Rights adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948. Defining and protecting basic human rights is an “eternal topic” that, due to the danger of abuse and misinterpretation, deserves to determine the origin and roots of such an important issue.
engleski
2025
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Keywords: human rights, Roman law, slaves, right to life, right to freedom