Fundamental Constitutional Rights in the New Constitutions of Eastern and Central Europe

The goal of this article is to review the efforts of the drafters. This study analyzes the process of drafting the new bills of rights against the background of the Western experience. The paper consists of two parts. The first examines the genesis of American and European constitutional protection of human rights, including the socialist concept of the bill of rights. The second is an analysis of basic constitutional rights as provided in several new constitutions and constitutional drafts of the countries of former Soviet dominance. The article also examines the actual records of these countries in human rights protection. The conclusions provide some observations on the likelihood of whether the drafters of new constitutions will reach some identifiable consensus, the possibility of a new constitutional model of human rights protection surfacing, and the applicability of the Western concepts of human rights to the East-Central European experience