Human Rights before 1948: The International Character of Vietnam’s First Constitution

Abstract

This paper examines Vietnam’s 1946 Constitution from the perspective of pre-1948 human rights and postcolonial constitutionalism, with the aim of elucidating the international character and normative significance of Vietnam’s first constitutional text. Rather than approaching the 1946 Constitution as a purely domestic legal instrument or a by-product of national political history, the study argues that it functioned as a deliberate normative declaration, reflecting Vietnam’s effort to assert legal personality and international legitimacy within the post-World War II international legal order. Drawing on constitutional text analysis, contextual historical inquiry, and selective comparative constitutional analysis, the paper demonstrates that principles such as human rights, popular sovereignty, representative democracy, the rule of law, and equality were constitutionalized at an early stage in the 1946 Constitution – prior to the full institutionalization of these norms at the international level in 1948. In doing so, the Vietnamese case is presented as a paradigmatic example of how postcolonial states did not merely receive international norms passively, but actively interpreted, adapted, and participated in the formation of universal values in modern constitutional and international law. The paper thus contributes to rethinking the history of human rights and the role of constitutions as normative instruments within an evolving international legal order.

https://doi.org/10.26803/MyRes.2026.02