Nature and Implementation of Social Assistance Norms in Public Health Emergencies

The lack of legislation and academic discussion on social assistance norms in public health emergencies is due to the fact that social assistance is simply regarded as a right clause oriented to judicial enforcement, without paying attention to its positive normative characteristics. Positive norms are goal-oriented, mandatory, weakly judicial and time-dimensional, and their implementation rules are mainly the pyramid-style legislative and administrative implementation. Under the premise of the principle of “prohibiting insufficient protection”, positive norms in the constitution construct “public framework order”, which is implemented by the legislative and administrative organs at all levels. Social assistance norms conform to the basic characteristics of positive norms, and their implementation logic should also follow the implementation logic of positive norms. Social assistance in public health emergencies is an extraordinary form of social assistance, but its “supporting legislation” is insufficient and its legislative logic is broken. The Social Assistance Law of the People’s Republic of China (Draft for Comments) adds a new mechanism for providing assistance to “needy people” in public emergencies and improves the mechanism for “temporary assistance”, which can better achieve the goal of positive norms of social assistance.