Chapter Four charts the emergence of human dignity in the context of international humanitarian law, providing the setting for its first constitutive stage. It begins in the second half of the nineteenth century, with human dignity’s symbolic entrance into the fabric of international law with the adoption and entry into force of the Hague Law (Martens Clause, 1899 and 1907 Conventions). The process to impose legal restraints on the conduct of hostilities preceded the Martens Clause and the actual consolidation of this stage was only completed in the aftermath of the Second World War with the watershed represented by the adoption of the Four Geneva Conventions in 1949 and, subsequently, the two Additional Protocols of 1977. Thus, this historical process extends over more than a century, with a range of different legal manifestations which can singled out as the key milestones.

Chapter Five charts human dignity in its second constitutive stage, characterized by the rise of international human rights law. Its first expressions in the 1920s (which echoed developments in connection with slave trade and slavery in the nineteenth century) and later in 1944 (with the Philadelphia Declaration), must be considered in the light of the decisive adoption of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, in 1948, and the adoption of the Convention against Genocide later that year. But it is difficult to consider these entry points, however important, as sufficient for the consolidation of human dignity in the form of human ‘rights’. In earnest, the consolidation process was not completed until the adoption of the two human rights Covenants in 1966, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).

This introduction states the basic thesis underpinning the entire book: over a period of two centuries, human dignity moved from the fringes to the centre of the international legal system. In a system shaped by another embodiment of dignity, sovereign dignity, human dignity came to nuance, then influence and, ultimately, fundamentally transform the very architecture of international law. The introduction summarizes the long and sinuous road followed by human dignity as a value and then as a norm. It then describes the analytical angle adopted in the book, and the overall organization of the demonstration.

Chapter Three relies on the conceptions of dignity introduced in Chapter Two to examine the historical processes through which human dignity found expression in international law, narrating when, why and, most importantly, which conceptions of human dignity permeated international law. The primary objective of Chapter Three is to demonstrate that distinct conceptions from the past (sovereign and human dignity, the latter in its Christian and secularised strands) have permeated debates at the origins of international law, sometimes blending with – and blurring – each other. More specifically, the study identifies three different but intertwined constitutive stages in this formalization process in international law, specifically: (i) a first constitutive stage, spanning from 1850 until 1949 (when the main area of expression of human dignity is international humanitarian law); (ii) a second constitutive stage, from 1919 until 1966 (with rise of international human rights law); and (iii) a third constitutive stage, running from 1899 until 1998 (with the emergence and slow consolidation not only of international crimes but also of international criminal tribunals).

Chapter Six explores the third and last constitutive stage of human dignity in international criminal law. Human dignity’s first manifestations coincide with the adoption and entry into force of the Hague Law (1899 and 1907) and the largely symbolic, in retrospect, Article 227 of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, under which the German Kaiser was to be brought to justice, although that did not happen. In 1945, with the Nuremberg Statute, human dignity is unequivocally enshrined in legal form, both in the definition of international crimes, including ‘against humanity’, and in the necessary corollary of an international prosecution of such crimes. The institutional and legal criminal framework of the 1990s, however, provides a more solid basis for the consolidation of human dignity through international criminal law, vesting it with an actionable nature. Aside from the expansion of conflict-specific international tribunals, the conclusion in 1998 of the Rome Statute establishing a general International Criminal Court, defining both crimes and institutional processes for the prosecution, consolidates the incremental approach prevailing until them in international criminal law.

Chapter Two focuses on the concept of dignity. It characterizes the two main competing conceptions subsequently analysed in the book, sovereign and human dignity. It begins by exploring the intellectual origins of the concept of dignity – with its religious and philosophical strands. Within human dignity, particular emphasis is laid on the Christian and Kantian (secularised) conceptions of human dignity due to their distinctive historical influence on the shaping of international law. On this basis, the first component of the analytical framework is built, namely the conceptual categories of dignity that will, subsequently, be used to explore how dignity has found expression in international law.

Chapter One is devoted to the clarification of the methodological structure. It characterizes the analytical framework developed to study the place of human dignity in international law introducing its four main components: (i) the definition of the concept of dignity and of the main analytical distinctions used in the study; (ii) the characterization of the processes of progressive recognition of human dignity in international law, which are referred to in this study as ‘constitutive stages’; (iii) an analytical cartography of different legal instruments, understood as specific ways of formulating a norm (principles, rights, obligations, crimes), on which the analysis of the legal expression of human dignity in international law is subsequently conducted; and (iv) the main overall narrative and argument regarding the place of human dignity in international law developed in the study.

In the concluding Chapter Seven, the study brings together the analysis conducted in previous chapters in order to extract their combined meaning. This book shows that the concept of human dignity made its first appearance in legal history in a religious form and was later transformed into a secularized concept, as a reaction to and limit upon the classical conception of sovereign dignity, enshrined in State sovereignty. This origin is at the root of and is still manifested in the various legal formulations of human dignity in different areas of law. To explain human dignity, to seek its religious roots, to see its evolution and its many legal manifestations, ultimately demonstrates that international law was historically shaped, despite the multi-cultural context in which it unfolded, by a secularization process akin to that of many domestic legal systems. Chapter Seven adopts this macro view and discusses the secularization argument in the light of the transformative function of human dignity in international law.