The study at hand focuses on the critical issue of seeking the functional utilisation of human dignity in the legal reasoning of judges and legislators, given that, today in particular, in an era of pressing challenges, such as dealing with poverty, unemployment, social exclusion, racism and discrimination, such a topic is prioritised over any other ones. And this happens, because the crisis we are already experiencing, more broadly understood as dysfunction, inadequacy, questioning, even as epistemological weakness, is not only fiscal, but a social crisis of ideological and political ingenuity.

Most of the planet is now dealing with matters of actual survival. And if once the Western world, in which the European continent and especially the European Union of 27 had the luxury of speaking theoretically and in safety about the European model of the welfare state, etc., today it has much more specific goals relating in particular to the assessment of the difference between life and mere survival. People, especially young people, daily experience multifaceted economic impasses, job insecurity, unemployment, but mainly the deprivation of their right to dream and fight for the life they want…

At the core of this multiple crisis, having the new inequalities as its main characteristic, the stake of national and individual dignity brings for reflection the anxiety of the Greek lawyer, identical to the anxiety of the lawyers of all democratic societies, trying to rationalise it and turn it into a series of legal, but also deeply political questions, persuasively inventing ideas, values, and visions.

Ensuring the protection of human dignity -even though it was once considered self-evident- today is required to become a navigator of a new model of the welfare state, which will not only constitute a passive process of redistribution of wealth, but will also constitute at the same time an integrated system of social justice, or rather the reduction of social injustice, creatively inspiring judge and legislator in the context of the belief that human rights are ultimately those that can demarcate the difference between life and mere survival and that the management of any crises, social or fiscal ones, cannot but aim at a life with human dignity…