Defensive Democracy and Human Dignity: Means to an End. A Look at the Romanian Case

Abstract

In its practice of militant democracy in 2024, the Constitutional Court of Romania did not explicitly refer to human dignity as a justification for the judicial outcome. In 2025, the Court expressly advanced human dignity, “the foundation of constitutional democracy”, as a legal argument to justify the constitutionality of amendments and supplements of criminal law provisions sanctioning, inter alia, expression. The Court activated, as a first, art. 17 of the European Convention on Human Rights (prohibition of abuse of right) and, in relation to it, quoted the Strasbourg Court on the notion of defensive democracy, thus contributing to a beneficial dialogue on human dignity in the logic of defensive liberal democracy in Romania.