The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (French: Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen) is a foundational document of the French Revolution, adopted by the National Constituent Assembly on 26 August 1789. It articulates a set of individual and collective rights drawn from Enlightenment philosophy, asserting the principles of liberty, equality, popular sovereignty, and the rule of law. The Declaration served as the preamble to several French constitutions and retains constitutional force in France today as part of the 1958 Fifth Republic framework. Its seventeen articles address natural rights, the limits of law, freedom of speech and religion, property rights, and the relationship between the state and the governed.
The Declaration was drafted amid the political and social crisis that preceded and accompanied the Revolution. Members of the National Constituent Assembly drew on a range of intellectual sources, including the writings of John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Montesquieu, as well as the practical example of American state declarations of rights, most notably the Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776. The Marquis de Lafayette, who had served in the American Revolutionary War, was among the drafters and corresponded with Thomas Jefferson during the process. The document was adopted as a statement of principles prior to the drafting of a full constitution. A fuller account of these events is available at French Declaration of Rights - History.
The Declaration's seventeen articles establish that sovereignty resides in the nation, that law is the expression of the general will, and that rights belong to all men by nature. Article 1 states that men are born free and equal in rights. Articles 2 through 9 address liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression as natural rights; define law as the expression of general will; and establish presumption of innocence. Articles 10 and 11 address freedom of opinion and freedom of speech and press, subject to legal limits. Later articles address taxation by consent, accountability of public officials, and the separation of powers. The Declaration does not address the rights of women or enslaved people, an omission that drew contemporary criticism - most notably from Olympe de Gouges, who authored a parallel Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen in 1791.
A subject of ongoing historical debate concerns the relationship between the French Declaration and its American antecedents - particularly whether the document is best understood as an independent product of French Enlightenment thought, as a derivative of American precedents, or as a genuinely transatlantic synthesis. Scholars have identified both textual parallels and substantive differences between the French Declaration and the American Declaration of Independence (1776) and the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776). The degree to which Lafayette and Jefferson shaped the French text directly, versus reflecting shared intellectual sources, remains contested. See Declaration - Transatlantic Influence Debate for a full account of this debate.
The Declaration has been incorporated by reference into the constitutional frameworks of France's Third, Fourth, and Fifth Republics. The Constitutional Council and the Council of State treat its provisions as binding constitutional norms. Beyond France, the Declaration influenced subsequent rights documents in Europe and Latin America and is frequently cited as a precursor to international human rights instruments, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). The extent and nature of that influence - whether direct, parallel, or overstated - is a subject of historical and legal scholarship.