Human dignity as a foundational value of peremptory norms in international law

Abstract

The central premise of the research is that international law is a value-laden system and that peremptory norms, the same as any other legal norms, are grounded on certain values that inspire their formation, advancement, and functioning. While there is no definite, exhaustive list of what norms merit this peremptory status, this paper invites to think of the foundational values of these norms through the prism of what unites them all, namely, the normative category of jus cogens itself. Thus, it seeks to delineate and describe what sort of values presumably underlie jus cogens by looking at the scholarly considerations and the available definitions of the notion as regards the function and purpose of jus cogens in respect to the international community and, having sketched out the image of these values, it probes the value of human dignity to the said description.