Sentences without Humiliation? Limits to Criminal Law Arising from Respect for Human Dignity

Abstract

The The purpose of this text is to analyze the limits to criminal intervention arising from the constitutional content of human dignity, understood as the inviolability of the physical and moral integrity of the individual, but not before specifying, in a very brief manner, the function of the principle of respect for human dignity in
criminal law in general, and the way in which different powers that characterize this principle according to its elaboration by the Constitutional Court are configured as limits to the criminal power of the State. To this end, an analysis of the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court is carried out using tools of constitutional and criminal dogma. The paper proposes that, in spite of the jurisprudential diaspora and the complexity of the concept of human dignity, it is possible to derive a content from it that serves as a limitation of criminal law within the framework of the Rule of Law.