Status of Human Dignity in the Process of Inferring Rulings

With the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948، human dignity as an important foundation for explication and formulation of human rights seriously found its way into the legal texts، to the extent that today many countries، including the Islamic Republic of Iran، formulate their constitutions according to human dignity. The present article seeks to examine the status of human dignity in the process of inferring rulings. The writer maintains that “preservation of human dignity” can appropriately be placed in the focal point of a legal rule as one of the general legal law (sharī‘at) purposes and be a document of and provider for some of the legal judgments (fatwās)، especially in the international relationsscene.