Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen: Rights and Law

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen is a seventeen-article charter adopted by France’s National Constituent Assembly on August 26, 1789, during the opening weeks of the French Revolution.¹ It replaced royal absolutism with a written framework that located political authority in the nation and guaranteed a set of individual freedoms the state could not lawfully remove. Written in a single revolutionary summer, it remains part of binding French constitutional law today.

Why It Was Written

By the summer of 1789, France was in fiscal crisis. The clergy and nobility, roughly two percent of the population, were largely exempt from taxation, while the remaining ninety-eight percent carried most of the burden. On the night of August 4, the National Assembly voted to abolish the feudal system entirely, sweeping away aristocratic privileges, serfdom, and the patchwork of exemptions that had defined the old regime.² The Declaration adopted three weeks later gave that break a philosophical backbone.

The Marquis de Lafayette, a veteran of the American Revolution, drafted an early version and presented it to the Assembly on July 11, 1789, with assistance from Thomas Jefferson, then the American minister to France.³ The Assembly debated and voted on the final text article by article between August 20 and August 26.⁴ Montesquieu’s argument for the separation of powers and Rousseau’s concept of the general will both left clear marks on the result.

The preamble states that “ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole cause of public calamities and of the corruption of governments,” and that a written declaration would remind both government and citizens of their rights and obligations.⁵

The Natural Rights It Guarantees

Article 1 opens with what may be the most quoted sentence in French legal history: “Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.” It adds that social distinctions can only rest on the common good, a direct repudiation of hereditary privilege.⁴ Article 2 names four rights the state exists to protect: liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression. These are called natural and inalienable, meaning no government can lawfully strip them away.⁵

The inclusion of “resistance to oppression” alongside liberty and property is striking. It gives legal footing to opposing tyrannical conduct, reflecting the Assembly’s own break from royal authority.

Article 4 defines liberty as the power to do anything that does not harm others, with only law setting the boundary.⁴ Article 5 works the other direction: law may only prohibit actions harmful to society, and anything the law does not forbid cannot be prevented.⁵ Freedom is the default; restriction is the exception that must be justified.

Sovereignty and the Law

Article 3 relocates political power from the throne to the nation as a whole. No individual and no group can exercise authority that does not flow from that national source.⁴ The king’s power became delegated rather than inherent, and every official became an agent of the public.

Article 6 defines law as the expression of the general will. Every citizen has the right to participate in making it, personally or through elected representatives. The article also declares all citizens equal before the law and eligible for public office based on ability alone, with no distinctions beyond talent and character.⁵ In a society where the best posts had been reserved for the nobility by birth, this was a radical promise.

Protections in Criminal Cases

Three articles form the Declaration’s criminal-justice framework, and they remain remarkably modern. Article 7 prohibits arrest or detention except in cases the law specifically authorizes, following procedures the law prescribes. Anyone who carries out or orders an arbitrary arrest is subject to punishment.⁴

Article 8 establishes two principles still central to criminal law worldwide. Only punishments strictly and clearly necessary may exist, and no one can be punished under a law that did not exist when the act was committed.⁵ The ban on retroactive criminal law prevents a government from outlawing something today and then punishing people who did it yesterday.

Article 9 introduces the presumption of innocence: every person is considered innocent until a court declares otherwise, and any force beyond what is necessary to secure a person during arrest is forbidden.⁵ Together, these articles were meant to prevent the arbitrary imprisonment that had defined the old regime, when royal letters could send a person to the Bastille without trial or explanation.

Opinion, Religion, and Expression

Article 10 protects the right to hold opinions without interference, including religious opinions, so long as their outward expression does not disturb public order.⁴ For a country where the Catholic Church had long enjoyed official status and Protestants faced legal penalties, this was a significant step toward religious tolerance. Private conscience is protected absolutely; only the public manifestation of belief can be limited.

Article 11 calls the free communication of ideas and opinions “one of the most precious rights of man.” Citizens may speak, write, and publish freely, though they bear responsibility for abuses of that freedom in cases the law defines.⁵ The practical effect was to dismantle the royal censorship system.

Taxation and Public Accountability

The tax provisions addressed one of the deepest grievances behind the Revolution. Article 12 states that guaranteeing rights requires a public force, and that this force exists for the benefit of everyone, not for the personal use of the officials who command it.⁴ Article 13 declares that a common tax is necessary to maintain that force and fund administration, and that it must be distributed among all citizens in proportion to their means.⁵ The phrase “all citizens” was the operative change: no more blanket exemptions for the privileged classes.

Article 14 gives citizens the right to verify the need for taxes, consent to them freely, monitor how the money is spent, and set the amount, method of collection, and duration of each tax.⁴ Article 15 then makes every public official accountable for how they administer their office, granting society the right to demand an accounting.⁵

Separation of Powers

Article 16 delivers one of the Declaration’s boldest claims: any society that does not guarantee rights and does not establish a separation of powers has no constitution at all.⁴ The article treats the separation of legislative, executive, and judicial authority as a prerequisite for legitimate government. A regime that concentrates all power in one body fails the test, whatever it calls itself. Montesquieu’s influence is especially visible here.

Property

Article 17, the final article, calls property an inviolable and sacred right. No one can be deprived of it unless public necessity, legally verified, clearly requires it, and the owner has first received fair compensation.⁴ Three conditions must all be met before the state can take property: the necessity must be public, it must be legally confirmed, and compensation must be paid in advance. The requirement that indemnity be “just and prior” sets a higher bar than many later property-rights frameworks, which allow compensation after seizure.

Who the Declaration Left Out

The sweeping language about universal rights masked significant exclusions. “Men” in the text meant exactly that. Women were denied the political rights the document proclaimed, including the right to participate in lawmaking and to hold public office.

In 1791, the playwright and activist Olympe de Gouges published a point-by-point rebuttal, the Declaration of the Rights of Woman. She argued that women should be eligible for all public offices according to their abilities, should participate in forming the law, and should share equally in tax obligations and public employment, since they already bore those burdens in practice.⁶ She noted that women could be sent to the scaffold but not the rostrum. De Gouges was executed by guillotine in 1793.

The promise that all people are “born and remain free and equal in rights” also failed to reach France’s colonies. Despite lobbying by abolitionists, commercial interests successfully blocked any clear extension of rights and freedom to enslaved people of African descent for years after 1789.⁷ Slavery in the French colonies was not abolished until February 1794, and only after the revolution in Saint-Domingue forced the issue. Napoleon reinstated it in 1802.

Does It Still Have Legal Force?

Yes. The preamble to France’s current constitution, adopted in 1958, explicitly proclaims the French people’s attachment to the Rights of Man as defined by the 1789 Declaration.⁸ In 1971, the Constitutional Council ruled that the Declaration carries full constitutional force, meaning French courts can strike down laws that violate its provisions.⁴ A document written to end one political order has become a permanent constraint on every French government that followed.

1
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution. Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen
2
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution. Decree of the National Assembly Abolishing the Feudal System, August 11, 1789
3
American Battlefield Trust. Lafayette’s Draft of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
4
Élysée. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
5
Avalon Project. Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
6
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution. Olympe de Gouges, The Declaration of the Rights of Woman (September 1791)
7
Slavery and Remembrance. French Revolution
8
Constitute Project. France 1958 (rev. 2008) Constitution