What is the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen?

A text from 1789 that still produces legal effects today: that is what surprises people most, and it is also what the exam is keen to check. The Declaration is not a historical relic, it is law in force.

What it proclaims

Adopted by the National Constituent Assembly in August 1789, the Declaration affirms that men are born and remain free and equal in rights. It sets out liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression as natural rights. It holds that the law is the expression of the general will and that it must be the same for all. It proclaims freedom of opinion, including religious opinion, and the free communication of thought, while making clear that everyone answers for the abuse of that freedom in the cases determined by law.

Why it still applies

The Declaration has never been repealed. The preamble to the 1946 Constitution, and then that of the 1958 Constitution, refer to it expressly: it therefore belongs to what is called the bloc de constitutionnalité. In practice, the Conseil constitutionnel can strike down a law that runs against its principles. A text more than two centuries old is thus the benchmark for judging the validity of today's laws, which explains why it features prominently in the exam syllabus.

Principles that are still alive

Several formulas from 1789 still shape everyday law. The presumption of innocence: every person is presumed innocent until declared guilty. Equality before taxation, shared among citizens according to their means. The principle that a penalty may only be imposed under a law that predates the offence. These rules, which turn up in the exam's scenario questions, are not abstractions: they decide how a person is judged, taxed or protected.

What it does not yet contain

The 1789 text is a starting point, not an end point, and the exam values candidates who can measure that gap. It proclaims equality in rights but grants the vote only to some men; universal male suffrage arrives only in 1848, and women's right to vote in 1944. It says nothing about slavery, definitively abolished in 1848. Finally, it ignores social rights — work, health, education, protection of the family — which would be proclaimed by the preamble to the 1946 Constitution, itself also part of the bloc de constitutionnalité. French fundamental rights are therefore read in two successive, complementary texts, separated by more than a century and a half.

Worth remembering

• Adopted in August 1789, it proclaims liberty, equality in rights, security and property.
• It has constitutional force through the preambles of 1946 and 1958.
• The presumption of innocence and equality before the law flow directly from it.

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