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Public Service in Customs Authorities Between Service and Labour: A Legal Distinction in the Light of the Social Doctrine of the Church
Abstract
This article examines the legal distinction between public service in customs authorities and employment relationships, addressing a persistent tendency in legal doctrine and practice to conflate these two forms of legal regulation. While customs officials perform work and remain entitled to labour-related guarantees, their legal status is shaped primarily by public law and oriented toward the exercise of public authority in pursuit of the common good. The article argues that treating customs service as a variant of employment relationships leads to conceptual confusion and undermines the institutional logic of public administration. The analysis identifies key criteria distinguishing public service from labour relations, including the purpose of the legal relationship, the source of legal obligation, the method of regulation, the nature of disciplinary authority, and the scope of permissible restrictions on rights. These criteria are examined not only from the perspective of positive law, but also through the moral measure of the social doctrine of the Church. Drawing on selected papal encyclicals and biblical foundations, the article demonstrates how the Church’s social teaching provides ethical boundaries for the exercise of public authority while affirming the dignity of human labour.
Keywords:
public service, customs authorities, labour law, dignity of labour, public authority, social doctrine of the ChurchMost read articles by the same author(s)
- Oleksandr Cherkunov, Professional Ethics Standards for Customs Officers in Ukraine Through the Lens of Sacred Scripture and Ukrainian Legislation , Kościół i Prawo: Vol. 14 No. 1 (2025)
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.