The Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms (, ) is a document enacted in 1991 by the

Czechoslovak Federative Republic After the Velvet Revolution in Revolutions of 1989, late-1989, Czechoslovakia adopted the official short-lived country name Czech and Slovak Federative Republic (, ; ''ČSFR'') during the period from 23 April 1990 until 31 December 1992, after w ...

and currently continued as part of the constitutional systems of both the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the south ...

and

Slovak Republic Slovakia, officially the Slovak Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the west, and the Czech Republic to the northwest. Slovakia's ...

Differences in the successor states of Czechoslovakia

In the Czech Republic, the document was kept in its entirety as a separate document from the

constitution A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organization or other type of entity, and commonly determines how that entity is to be governed. When these pri ...

, but imbued with the same legal standing as the constitution.Full text of Czech Charter
/ref>Constitution of the Czech Republic, Art. 112 It is a part of the Constitutional Code of the Czech Republic – a sum of constitutional laws and other sources of law, explicitly named in the constitution – that possesses the highest level of legal force. In Slovakia, the basic provisions of the Charter were integrated directly into the Slovak constitution.Constitution of the Slovak Republic, Art. 5–54
Though these legal provisions articles are substantively the same, there are some differences, such as the Slovak contention that "the privacy of correspondence and secrecy of mailed messages and other written documents and the protection of personal data are guaranteed."Constitution of the Slovak Republic, Art. 22 The inclusion of the goals of the Charter directly into the Slovak constitution means that only the

currently has a "Charter of Fundamental Rights and Basic Freedoms".

Creation of the Czech Constitution

An agreement was signed after the negotiations of the prime ministers Václav Klaus and Vladimír Mečiar on in August 1992, that set the date of the

dissolution of Czechoslovakia The dissolution of Czechoslovakia, which took effect on December 31, 1992, was the Self-determination, self-determined Partition (politics), partition of the federal republic of Fifth Czechoslovak Republic, Czechoslovakia into the independent ...

to 31 December 1992. The dissolution was approved by the Parliament in November of the same year. Because of an opposition from the Civic Democratic Alliance (ODA), the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) and especially the prime minister Klaus – who described the Charter as "''the weeds of the Constitution''" – the Charter never became a part of the Constitution. The time was running out and the members of the parliament had to reach an agreement on the text of the new Czech Constitution. Because of that a new legal term ''Constitutional Code'' was created, so that the Charter could have a legal authority similar to the constitution without being a part of the constitution. Viktor Knapp – a distinguished Czech lawyer – called this at the time "''a result of a strange legislative compromise''".

Amendments to the Charter

First Amendment (1998)

The Charter was first amended by the Constitutional Act No. 162/1998 Coll., which changed the length of possible police detention without charges. The Article 8(3) of the Charter originally allowed the police to detain a person for questioning for up to 24 hours, after which time the person must be either released or charged and handed over to a court with request for remand. This was amended in 1998 to allow up to 48 hours of police detention without charges.

Second Amendment (2021)

The second amendment to the Charter was passed as the Constitutional Act No. 295/2021 Coll. A new sentence was added to the Article 6(4), stating that: "''The right to defend own life or life of another person also with arms is guaranteed under conditions set out in the law.''" The provision is interpreted as guaranteeing legal accessibility of arms in a way that must ensure possibility of effective self-defense and as constitutional stipulation which underscores the individual right to be prepared with arms against an eventual attack, i.e. that courts cannot draw a negative inference from the fact that a defender had been preparing to avert a possible attack with use of weapons.

Comparison with the US legislation

The document is somewhat analogous to the

United States Bill of Rights The United States Bill of Rights comprises the first ten list of amendments to the United States Constitution, amendments to the United States Constitution. It was proposed following the often bitter 1787–88 debate over the Timeline of dr ...

, although its provisions tend to be more specific, and imbue its citizens with more and different rights than in

United States constitutional law The constitutional law of the United States is the body of law governing the interpretation and implementation of the United States Constitution. The subject concerns the scope of power of the United States federal government compared to the indi ...

, which by contrast recognizes and protects natural rights rather than grant legal entitlement.

References

{{reflist

External links

Full text of the Charter (in English)

Constitution of the Czech Republic Government of the Czech Republic Political charters Law of Czechoslovakia Law of the Czech Republic Law of Slovakia National human rights instruments 1991 in law 1991 documents