Available in Russian
Author: Maxim Arzamastsev
DOI: 10.21128/1812-7126-2025-2-25-48
Keywords: human dignity; proportionality principle; inviolability of dignity; protection of dignity; human self-determination; constitutional norm
Since the end of World War II, both international and domestic protection of human rights has been largely based on the notion of dignity. Germany was among the first countries to include dignity clause in the text of the Constitution, defining it as one of the foundations of legal order and prohibiting any changes thereto. On this basis, the Federal Constitutional Court has been consistently developing the traditions of classical German philosophy (primarily Kant’s ideas) and Western individualism, organically supplemented by principles of the rule of law. This creates an image of a person who is uniquely individual, but connected to society. The constitutional discourse of dignity contains teleological, axiological, deontological and human rights aspects. The author examines the influence of modern concepts of human dignity on the emergence of new subjective rights, understanding and application of constitutional provisions, inter alia regarding emergence and termination of the protection of individual self-development, and relationship between criminal prohibitions and the sphere of autonomy. The open notion of dignity allows for its evolutive interpretation, filling it with various contents in the context of scientific progress and socio-cultural changes, but excludes external standardization. Against this background, a discussion has unfolded in Germany about the absolute and relative nature of the constitutional norm of dignity, its definition as rule or principle; yet, the absolute value of person and special significance of their self-determination in matters not affecting the autonomy of another subject remain unchanged. The author reads the norm of dignity as containing the right of a person to demand that the state does not intrude into inviolable part of their autonomy, does not destroy the boundaries of their personal life, and does not exert influence incompatible with their status as a person, depriving them of this status, or denying respect to it. In such a model, the principle of proportionality assists in the weighing of not the dignity itself but of the influence on it, which is permissible if the latter does not violate the inviolability of dignity, and does not contradict it.
About the author: Maxim Arzamastsev – Candidate of Sciences (Ph.D.) in Law, Associate Professor, Department of Criminal Law, Saint Petersburg State University, Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Citation:
Arzamastsev M. (2025) Chelovecheskoe dostoinstvo kak osnova i kak norma konstitutsionnogo prava Germanii [Human dignity as the basis and as the norm of constitutional law in Germany]. Sravnitel'noe konstitutsionnoe obozrenie, vol.34, no.2, pp.25–48. (In Russian).
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