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Max Planck Encyclopedia of Comparative Constitutional Law [MPECCoL]

Right to Life

Johann Justus Vasel

Content type:
Encyclopedia entries
Product:
Max Planck Encyclopedia of Comparative Constitutional Law [MPECCoL]
Article last updated:
June 2022

From: Oxford Constitutions (http://oxcon.ouplaw.com). (c) Oxford University Press, 2023. All Rights Reserved.date: 03 December 2023

Subject(s):
Abortion — Dignity and autonomy of individuals — Equality — Petition — Right to life — Group rights — Individual rights — Fundamental rights — Embryos and embryonic stem cells — Patients — Women

General Editors: Rainer Grote, Frauke Lachenmann, Rüdiger Wolfrum
Managing Editor: Martina Mantovani

1 The right to life is presumably the most essential guarantee of any constitution, as it forms a ‘conditio sine qua non’ for all other fundamental freedoms (civil and political rights). Even regarding the right to dignity—as far as constitutions recognize this as an individual right or value (human dignity and autonomy)—the right to life forms the ‘vital basis’ and is thus, as the German Federal Constitutional Court coined it, a Höchstwert, ie, a supreme value (1 BvF 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6/74 (1975) (Ger) at 41 ff; 1 BvR 347/98 (2005) (Ger) at 45; 2 BvR 1013, 1019,...
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