THE RIGHT TO DIGNITY - BETWEEN ASPIRATION AND LEGISLATION

Abstract

The study aims to analyse one of the essential rights of the human being, the right to dignity, with particular implications for the evolution of communities, societies and humanity as a whole. Dignity is also an ethical and legal value, which runs like a guiding thread through the evolution of individuals, whether viewed in isolation or in a larger or smaller group. Dignity is the cornerstone of the architecture of fundamental rights and freedoms, a conclusion drawn from its inclusion in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, in the sequence of its component parts, as its first title. Article 1(3) of the revised and republished Romanian Constitution regulates the values declared supreme in the Romanian State and guaranteed in the spirit of the democratic traditions of the Romanian people and the ideals of the December 1989 Revolution. The first of these values is human dignity. Then follow, in succession, the rights and freedoms of citizens, the free development of the human personality, justice and political pluralism. Hence the conclusion that, in the view of the Romanian constitutional legislator, human dignity is also the pedestal of the values which are the essential elements of the Romanian state's identity. We say this because we are referring to the first article of the Fundamental Law, whose name is “the Romanian state.”