Beyond Reasonableness: The Dignitarian Structure of Human and Constitutional Rights

Abstract

The last two decades have witnessed a wide-ranging and global discussion of the theory and structure of human and constitutional rights. This debate initially focused on the principle of proportionality and subsequently on the related ideas of the ‘culture of justification’ and the ‘right to justification.’ There is now a far-reaching agreement that both proportionality and justification in human and constitutional rights law are concerned with the reasonableness, alternatively the justification in terms of public reason, of the act under consideration. Thus, reasonableness and/or public reason have assumed a, perhaps the, central place in the theory of human and constitutional rights.