Abstract

The article aims at analysing the growing importance of dignity discourse in recent constitutional courts cases. It moves from the constitutional courts' cases on same-sex marriage as illustrative of a more general trend on the use of dignity in constitutional adjudication. If focuses on the different meanings of dignity and argues that it cannot be considered a "rhetoric tool". On the contrary, dignity - with its flexible and complex meaning - provides a convenient language to protect fundamental rights of "new" or "newly recognised" groups and at the same time makes possible to accommodate equality arguments on more contingent grounds.