Human Dignity: The Constitutional Value and the Constitutional Right

by Aharon Barak

Human dignity is now a central feature of many modern constitutions and international documents. As a constitutional value, human dignity involves a person's free will, autonomy, and ability to write a life story within the framework of society. As a constitutional right, it gives full expression to the value of human dignity, subject to the specific demands of constitutional architecture. This analytical study of human dignity as both a constitutional value and a constitutional right adopts a legal-interpretive perspective. It explores the sources of human dignity as a legal concept, its role in constitutional documents, its content, and its scope. The analysis is augmented by examples from comparative legal experience, including chapters devoted to the role of human dignity in American, Canadian, German, South African, and Israeli constitutional law.

400 pages, Hardcover

First published January 26, 2015

About the author

Aharon Barak (Hebrew: אהרן ברק) is an Israeli lawyer and jurist who served as President of the Supreme Court of Israel from 1995 to 2006. Prior to this, Barak served as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Israel from 1978 to 1995, and before this as Attorney General of Israel from 1975 to 1978.

Barak was born with the name of Erik Brick in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1936. Having survived the Holocaust, he and his family later immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1947. He studied law, international relations and economics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and obtained his Bachelor of Laws in 1958. Between 1958 and 1960, he was drafted into the Israeli military.

From 1974 to 1975, Barak was dean of the law faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Barak is currently a law professor at Reichman University in Herzliya, and has taught at institutions including Yale Law School, Central European University, Georgetown University Law Center, and the University of Toronto Faculty of Law.