When Ambivalent Principles Prevail: Leads for Explaining Western Legal Orders' Infatuation with the Human Dignity Principle

Abstract

This paper originates in the statement of the human dignity principle's (HDP) growing importance in many legal orders. It first examines whether many legal orders' interest for the HDP may be linked to its intrinsic (symbolic/axiological) or extrinsic (usefulness in terms of litigation) qualities. Since the conclusions of this examination do not prove totally convincing - or at least not to the degree that one would expect for such a foundational principle as the HDP, - the argument looks in another direction: that of scholarly promotion. Indeed, a research conducted on French material provides with firm bases for suggesting that one of the striving forces of the recent legal infatuation with the HDP has to do with the fact that it has been seized by critical trends of legal scholarship as a favorable occasion for promoting the resurgence of theoretically naturalist representations of law.

Keywords: human dignity, naturalist theories of law, EU Charter of Fundamental Rights