In the proper meaning of constitutional law, the notion of human rights and freedoms acquires its full affirmation exactly by reaching the quality of “fundamental” human rights and freedoms, which in itself is made possible only by fulfilling certain essential conditions: by abandoning the understanding that rights and freedoms represent only political proclamations; by accepting the view that rights and freedoms are protected through legally binding norms of a constitutional character; by accepting a full supra-legal validity of constitutional acts in the field of rights and freedoms; by gradual elimination of the “supremacy” of legislative bodies in regulation of rights and freedoms; by developing appropriate mechanisms/tests of protection of rights and freedoms in constitutional adjudication procedures.

In classical (Western) democracies (e.g. the United States of America, France, Federal Republic of Germany) such a development has taken place mostly in the second part of the 20th century, while in newer democracies (including the Republic of Croatia) the same phenomenon has started only in the last few years.

Normative consequences of development of such an understanding of constitutionally protected rights and freedoms are, in a non-exhausting list given here, rather numerous: first, they are of crucial importance for a full understanding of value and practical position that rights and freedoms occupy in (national) constitutional orders (rights and freedoms as supra-legal norms that legally bind legislative body); second, they give an answer to the question of which exact content in a domestic constitutional order should be taken as content that merits being protected exactly through a category of “fundamental”, and not some other, rights and freedoms; third, they have essential influence for specifying possible differences in a hierarchy of protection of personal, political, economic, social, cultural, environmental and other rights and freedoms; fourth, they are also important for understanding possible correlations which that way develop towards a wider environment in which rights and freedoms are also guaranteed and in which separate national constitutional orders exist and operate themselves.

Also, and relying upon the fact that a contemporary vision of such described notion of fundamental rights and freedoms can exactly be examined through analyzing relevant comparative constitutional case-law, the course Fundamental Rights and Freedoms in Comparative Constitutional Law offers to students a study of such a case-law through a number of selected and comparable examples. At the same time, the course offers an appropriate practical dimension of legal education in the field of comparative constitutional law (case-law study).