Aharon Barak’s Concept of Human Dignity and the Notion of Dignity in Jurisprudence of Polish Constitutional Court

Israeli scholar and judge, Aharon Barak rejects the position that dignity is an axiomatic, universal concept. Moreover, he is in favor of “spacious” understanding of the right to dignity, making it a vast and broad category. The aim of the paper is to examine whether the concept of dignity presented by Barak is useful to understand the approach to human dignity as a legal concept in those Central European legal systems which have been influenced by German constitutional theory. In that regard the jurisprudence of Polish Constitutional Court is examined. The author is not fully convinced by Barak’s approach to dignity.  The conclusion is drawn, however, that Barak is right when claiming that the status of an absolute right granted to the right to dignity means also that its scope is defined in a restrictive way.