On the grounds of the fundamental value of the human rights, which is the human dignity, this article describes a basis of the right to health care in terms of quality, discloses its concept, reviews the spheres of health system in which this right is exercised: health care and public health. The right to health care is stressed as one of the fundamental rights, without which the person will not able to enjoy other rights: economic, political and social rights. It (...) comprises the right to enjoy the best physical and mental health. The right to health care is not absolute in itself: efficiency of its implementation depends upon both ability of administrative and institutional systems, which were created by the state, to properly implement the assigned functions and upon the individual, its state of health and lifestyle. (shrink)

Social life is changing very fast. People are trying to find out reasons of living in a safe society and understand their role in it. The ‘wrong’ and ‘right‘ models of the social life, state and law systems are appearing. In the XXth century, one of them – socialism – made suggestion how to solve social problems, determinated of capitalism. This work deals with the situation of Lithuanian social thought in the Republic of Lithuania (1900-1940). In the article, the standpoint (...) of catholics of socialism is reflected. Catholics displayed socialism as a system, which accumulated many distorted images about human nature, motivations of human behavior, society and its functionating. Considering the society being an organic totality of individuals, but not a faceless mass, and an individual being a personality having natural rights to be respected, but not considered as a little screw without any rights in the state machine, with whom any experiments may be performed, they disclosed Utopia of the idea, proposed by socialists, of the possibility of a perfect society creation by the only preliminarily arranged correct plan,. For this purpose to be achieved, they constructed a model of socialist economy and then destroyed it, demonstrating economical unefficiency of this system. In this manner, intellectuals warned Lithuania and its people about the destructiveness of the realization of such an experiment. In spite of criticism of socialism, some intellectuals, such as A. Maceina, S. Šultė and S. Šalkauskis, appeared to be rather respective to the new social ideas and did not distinguish any social economic system as the best and only one. They thought that all the world, including Lithuania, has to create a new social life and take as a base the progressive ideas of socialism and capitalism. According to the opinion of the catholics, the most reliable way to a safe sočiety and economical welfare passes through the cooperation of individuals and state’s duty to create right laws. Ideological spirit was the main obstacle for the intellectuals to recognize trends of socialism by their aims and methods. That is the reason, why socialism was identified as bolsevism. However, the expression of the intellectuals’ opinion about socialism, its ideological herritage and perspectives enriches the research of the Lithuanian legal phylosophical and political thought and allows to understand better the ideological development of socialism and to define its competence and limits of validity in the contemporary world. Valuable ideas may be fruitfully used in creating a democratic society, social state and the rule of law. (shrink)

Human rights stem from community values; therefore, even today they may develop only on the basis of the values of a particular community. When the interests of a society change, new threats to the same value originate. A constant scientific dialogue is necessary in order to neutralise these threats effectively. The current socio-cultural context reveals the problems related to the legal protection of human dignity through a contraposition of instrumental and teleological attitude towards the human dignity. The article discusses ideological (...) provisions theological ideas of Judaism, Christianity, natural rights, especially the provisions of the Stoa, and the concept of I. Kant which became the grounds for declaring every person to be equally respectable and for recognising every person as a subject of law. This enabled people to create individual social value under the conditions of dignified existence. The author also discusses the extent to which the ideological excursus allows filling in the gaps of legal protection and serving the present universal consent on the common value human dignity. (shrink)

The article construes a modern concept of human dignity and factors influencing it. On the grounds of the Antique Greek-Roman notion of a human being as in-dividuus (Lat. not divisible, integral) and per-sona (Lat. mask, role played by an actor), the ambiguity of the human dignity is revealed: on one hand, every human being enjoys an unchangeable and non-deprivable dignity of the human being, on the other hand, the human being, as a creature and participant of social relations, himself/herself creates (...) the dignity of a person. On the grounds of the hermeneutical attitude, it is shown that that human dignity (within the meaning of individuum) may be protected only by means of the guarantees of particular human rights and, vice versa, only by ensuring particular human rights one may also guarantee the protection of human dignity. (shrink)