Respect for the honor, privacy and dignity of the human person

• Author: Petru Tarchila
• Position: PhD Associate Professor, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences 'Aurel Vlaicu', University of Arad
• Pages: 34-40

AGORA International Journal of Juridical Sciences, http://univagora.ro/jour/index.php/aijjs

ISSN 1843-570X, E-ISSN 2067-7677

No. 1 (2020), pp. 34 - 40

34

RESPECT FOR THE HONOR, PRIVACY AND DIGNITY OF THE

HUMAN PERSON

P. TĂRCHILĂ

Petru TĂRCHILĂ

PhD Associate Professor, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences „Aurel Vlaicu”,

University of Arad

Arad, str. Bulevardul Revoluției, nr. 77, Arad county

petru.tarchila@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

The right protects the person against the touches brought to his image by the so-called

"image right". The man, the natural person enjoys honor and dignity, moral values

guaranteed and protected by the legislation in force.Art.72 of the new Civil Code, related to

this right stipulates:

(1) Everyone has the right of respect for their dignity.

(2) Any prejudice to the honor and reputation of a person without its consent or

without respecting the limits provided for in article 75 is prohibited.”

Romania's constitution at art. 30 paragraph (6), provides: "Freedom of expression

cannot harm the dignity, honor, private life of the person nor the right to one's own image."

The right of each of us to protect our own image is undoubtedly the fruit of the jurisprudence

and the protection is guaranteed both by the fundamental Charter, represented by the

Constitution of Romania, as well as by the legal norms of civil law. Legal advisors concluded

that the right of each one on our own image is a real, absolute, inalienable right of the

holder, called the right to the image. Like the name, the image of the person finds protection

as the identifier of the person. The image is a representation of the physical characteristics of

the person, it is both a form and a substance, it is an external dimension of the human being.

1

It is a privileged manifestation of personality.

This right designates the legal possibility of any natural person to request respect

even if judicially of his honor and dignity if they have been violated. Both the honor and

dignity have a particular feature which refers strictly to their holder; they also have a social

dimension that aims at esteem, consideration and respect for the peers, granted to the holder

of these rights. From a judicial point of view, the prejudice of the honor of a natural or legal

person bears the name of insult (when the accusations are insulting, offending or when the

language is licentious) or of slander (when they refer to certain facts, habits or behaviour of

the holder, facts which can be true or not). Slander and insult were sanctioned by article 205

and 206 in the old Criminal Code, as offences, but in the new legislation, they do not

represent offences, but are subject to criminal and civil sanctions because the injured party

may request moral damages for the damage suffered.

In art. 74, the New Civil Code, legally regulates and stipulates the right of any natural

person to have his/her private life respected, the right at free speech, at his/her own voice,

1

The image derives from the Latin imago and Fr. image; in a first sense, it evokes the sensory-type reflection of

an object in the human mind in the form of sensations, perceptions or representations; (The explanatory

dictionary of the Romanian language, Academiei Ed., Bucharest, 1984, p. 415).