Personality Rights In The Roman Civil Code

The Constitution of 1991 legislated one fundamental value, legally protected at international and national levels: human personality. The Constitution adopted in 1991 under national referendum solemnly provided that Romania was a democratic and social state governed by the rule of law, where, among other things, the "free development of human personality" was a supreme value, guaranteed by the state. The constitutional statement had a double significance: it provided Romanian citizens with a broad sphere of action to develop their personalities, taken in a complex sense: from cultural, professional, linguistic aspects down to social­economic, political, religious, etc. ones. At the same time, it imposed on the country's governing system – Parliament, Government, Head of State, legal courts, public administration authorities – the obligation to provide the structural and functional framework for a genuine development of each individual's personality. Under the Act for the Revision of the Constitution, adopted in 2003, human personality has been re­constitutionalized being referred to the spirit of the Romanian people's democratic traditions and of the Revolution of 1989. While constitutionally reconfiguring human personality, the derived Constituent Assembly has linked the juridical contents of human personality to the Romanian constitutional traditions. It is not a mere institutional undertaking, but also, and primarily so, a theoretical­applicative one, if we are to also take into account the fact that the new Civil Code has attached particular importance to the personalityrelated rights, seen as civil rights. The new constitutional statement, to be found under article 1 paragraph (3) of the Fundamental Act, has acquired the value of a constitutional principle, legitimated by a long constitutional tradition. This was also the intention of the constituent law­maker of 1991, reconfirmed in 2003. In consonance with that, the Headnote of the new Civil Code stipulates that the purpose of provisions laid down in Book I ("On persons") is to acknowledge, protect and defend, equally and effectively, the civil rights and freedoms of natural persons, in consonance with public order and public morals. In this paper, the author attempts to analyze, from a theoretical point of view, the constitutional significance of the free development of human personality.