Human Dignity in Slovenia

Abstract

The Constitution of the Republic of Slovenia contains no provision that expressly guarantees the protection and inviolability of human dignity in general. However, the extensive catalogue of human rights and fundamental freedoms leaves no doubt that the Constitution places the individual and his or her dignity in the centre of the national constitutional order. The Constitutional Court played a key role in the development of the meaning and content of the concept of human dignity. In particular the Tito Street Case has to be mentioned. By this Decision the Constitutional Court – undoubtedly also under the influence of Article 1 of the German Basic Law – grounded human dignity in Article 1 of the Constitution which determines that Slovenia is a democratic republic. Human dignity is an open-textured fundamental constitutional value and a constitutional law principle. It has a normative expression in numerous provisions of the Constitution and is especially defined by the provisions which ensure individual human rights and fundamental freedoms. These are intended precisely for the protection of different aspects of human dignity, whereby they are also themselves more or less open-textured. Human rights and fundamental freedoms shall be exercised directly on the basis of the Constitution, and they are also binding upon regular courts when they apply and interpret laws. Human dignity is thus not merely a proclaimed constitutional value, as it is implemented in legal proceedings – ultimately also proceedings to review the constitutionality of laws or decide on a constitutional complaint before the Constitutional Court – thus becoming effective and living law.