The Right to Dignity Rex D. Glensy - Columbia Law School

96 COLUMBIA HUMAN RIGHTS LAW REVIEW [43:65
2. Foreign Law
As discussed in Part II.A., scholars began renewing their
attention to dignity rights in the aftermath of World War II, where
the unmitigated horrors of the Holocaust were laid bare for the entire
world to see. However, this impetus was not confined to the halls of
academia, but rather spilled over into the legal world in a very
concrete manner. Thus, in the postwar world, human dignity became
the central building block of the constitutional framework of not an
insignificant number of nations, particularly those that reformed
their government structure as a result of the conflict. Thus Germany,
Italy, Japan, Israel, and South Africa all have explicit clauses in their
constitutions protecting the right to dignity of every individual. 146 It is
not surprising that the nations that went through indescribable
trauma as a result of the policies of their outgoing regimes (or, in the
case of Israel, at its creation) were very quick to adopt dignity as a
key uncompromising value. Just as in some of the Eighth
Amendment cases discussed above, the right to dignity in these
countries is synonymous with the right not to be treated as an
object—a minimum standard of conduct. 147 However, most of these
countries have not stopped at this baseline, but have developed
dignity rights of considerable substantive import.
Probably the most important and influential nation to give a
real substance to its dignity jurisprudence is Germany. Article 1,
section 1 of the German Basic Law states: “The dignity of man is
inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all public
authority.” 148 This short pair of sentences packs an extremely
powerful punch that ripples throughout German law. Aside from the
clear Kantian overtones of the conceiving of dignity as “inviolable,” 149
146. See Eckart Klein & David Kretzmer, supra note 21, at v, v–vii
(describing the law of dignity in several European countries, as well as South
Africa).
147. Indeed, the German Constitutional Court when confronted with
interpreting the right to dignity often refers to the atrocities committed by the
Nazis “as a basis for illustrating and classifying examples of the negation of
human dignity.” Weinrib, supra note 33, at 339.
148. Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland [Grundgesetz] [GG]
[Basic Law], May 23, 1949, BGBl. I at art. 1 (Ger.). The next two articles read as
follows: “The German people therefore acknowledge inviolable and inalienable
human rights as the basis of every community, of peace and of justice in the
world. The following basic rights shall bind the legislature, the executive, and the
judiciary as directly applicable law.” Id. at arts. 2, 3.
149. The German Constitutional Court has confirmed this vision of the
right to dignity. See, e.g, Donald Kommers, The Constitutional Jurisprudence of