Title 2 of The Swiss Federal Constitution - Chapter 3: Social Goals

Chapter 3: Social Goals

Article 41 consists of a list of "social goals" which the confederation and the cantons "shall strive to ensure". They include the availability of social security, health care, housing and public education.

These goals are of a programmatic nature, and are declared not to be directly enforceable. They are also counterbalanced by a reference to individual responsibility in article 6. This means that, contrary to many other Western constitutions, so-called positive or second- and third generation rights are mostly absent from the constitutional text, although they are more widely recognised in legal doctrine and practice. Even so, the inclusion of this provision in the constitution was strongly contested on grounds of economic policy and cantonal autonomy.

Read more about this topic:  Title 2 Of The Swiss Federal Constitution

Famous quotes containing the words chapter, social and/or goals:

    “When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language.”
    —John Donne (c. 1572–1631)

    “Although adults have a role to play in teaching social skills to children, it is often best that they play it unobtrusively. In particular, adults must guard against embarrassing unskilled children by correcting them too publicly and against labeling children as shy in ways that may lead the children to see themselves in just that way.”
    —Zick Rubin (20th century)

    “We should stop looking to law to provide the final answer.... Law cannot save us from ourselves.... We have to go out and try to accomplish our goals and resolve disagreements by doing what we think is right. That energy and resourcefulness, not millions of legal cubicles, is what was great about America. Let judgment and personal conviction be important again.”
    —Philip K. Howard, U.S. lawyer. The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America, pp. 186-87, Random House (1994)