argued that humans in their "natural state" have an unalienable set of "human rights" regardless of their social standing; these laws constitute today a basic set of laws that no other laws built upon can ever contradict,
everyone is equal in their rights
establishment of the "social contract", the contract between the state and the individual within an economy where individuals relinquish or rather delegate some authority to the state in favor of benefiting from the protection of the state,
compared to Locke and Hobbes, where the authority of the state is absolute, the Rousseau "social contract" grants direct power to individuals, the "general will" that would even be tasked with legislative matters within the state.