3. Legal development and human rights advancement

Many scholars believe that human rights can be divided into, for example, customary human rights and statutory human rights. As a matter of fact, however, customary human rights exist in customary rules without explicit and rigorous determinacy and mandatory security by the state, and this hence determines that customary human rights are far less explicit, specific and effective than statutory human rights. In the primitive ages, human rights were recognized and maintained by relying mainly on customary rules as primitive social norms. Only after the society under rule of law came, humankind began to shift gradually from relying mainly on customary rules for human rights recognition and maintenance to relying mainly on statutory rules for human rights recognition and maintenance. This process, of course, shows human advancement in human rights assurance.

Humankind didn’t stop at simply using laws for human rights recognition and maintenance, but went further and promoted human rights advancement in the development course of law. Humankind developed continuously, so did law and legal protection of human rights. Whenever law gained new development, there was improvement in the level of human rights recognition and protection by law. When we look back into the human history, it is easy to find that in different ages, human rights protection by law had different forms and levels. The condition of human rights protection always went ahead in the continuous development of law. Law became one of carriers of the contents of human rights and became the most effective means for human rights protection. Thus the development of law became an important drive for human rights advancement.

Particularly when humankind moved from the rule of men towards the rule of law, law transited gradually from mainly a political ruling instrument to more a social management means and a human rights means. Today, whether or not law safeguards human rights, and whether or not it can protect human rights soundly and effectively, have already become an important mark of development in modern rule of law, as well as an important characteristic of modern law distinguishing from ancient law. In modern society, any law that can be said for the purpose of rule of law must include human rights as an object of legal protection; any country that can be said one under rule of law must use the condition of human rights protection as a reflection of its legal advancement. With modern development of humankind and law, human rights have already become an element, value and goal of the rule of law. China’s progress in human rights was made in synchronization with its development, and especially after China set the goals of administrating the country according to law and building a socialist country under the rule of law, human rights protection went further and became a theme of Chinese society. Human rights progress made in western countries cannot be separated from the development of western laws, and the healthy development and significant progress in human rights protection in developing countries including China are also significant achievements made in promoting the rule of law.