Dignity in the Jurisprudence of European Court of Human Rights

Summary The notion of dignity is the underlying conceptual foundation of international law of human rights in. It is also the basis for guarantees of all human rights in general, irrespective of the protected individual, scope, character of the right or freedom or irrespective of the particular generation of human rights. Dignity is also the concept that evades its exhaustive definition. The European Convention on human Rights (ECHR) does not contain the term “dignity” in its core text. It can be found only in the preamble to the additional protocol to the ECHR n°13 . Despite that fact, the case-law of European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) refers to the notion of dignity frequently and in numerous aspects. The purpose of this article is to analyze the ECtHR’s jurisprudence referring to the notion of dignity in order to examine the Court’s approach in this regard. Due to the limited framework of the study, it will focus mostly on articles 3 and 8 of the Convention.