134 THE YALE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW [Vol. 33: 113 War II constitutions. 113 The preamble of the Coven ant, like the International Covenant on Civil and Po litical Rights, acknowledges that the rights enunciated within them “derive from the inherent dignity of the human person.”114 A school of international lega l scholarship made human dignity central to the inventory of values , which it sought to devis e for the worl d public order. Thus, the founders of the New Haven School of international law sought to both contain and stimulate a policy-oriented jurisprudence founded on dignity, using ant hropological and hist orical sources. 115 In a variety of constitutions, jurists have relied almo st inevitably on human dignity when peeling back the justifications for rights. 116 In American constitutional law, dignity has played an important, albeit more covert, role.117 There are many juridi cal examples of how the nor m of di gnity has practically guided the interpretation of economic and social rights. The German Constitutional Court has used it to give meaning to the “existential minimum” of s ocial welfare in the German Basic Law, by whi ch society is obliged to provide everyone with the socioeconomic conditions adequate for a dignified existence.118 The South African Constitu tional Court has affirmed the important relationship between dignity and s ocial assistance. 119 The 27, 1981, OAU Doc. CAB/LEG/67/3/Rev. 5, 21 I.L.M. 58 (“ Every individual shall have the right to the respect of the dignity inherent in a human being . . . .”). 113. E.g., MARY ANN GLENDON, A WORLD MADE NEW: ELEANOR ROOSEVELT AND THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS 175, 263 (2001) (“Most of the constitutions and treaties of the latter h alf of the tw entieth century belong to the dignitarian family.”); see GRUNDGESETZ [GG] [Constitution], art. 1, § 1 (F.R.G.) (making human dignity “inviolable”). 114. Covenant, supra note 19, pm bl.; ICCPR, supra note 38, pm bl.; see also U.N. Charter pmbl. (expressing belief in “the dignity and worth of the human person”). 115. MYRES S. MCDOUGAL, HAROLD D. LASSWELL & LUNG-CHU CHEN, HUMAN RIGHTS AND WORLD PUBLIC ORDER: THE BASIC POLICIES OF AN INTERNATIONAL LAW OF HUMAN DIGNITY (1980); Myres S. McDougal & Harold D. Lasswell, The Identification and A ppraisal of Diverse Systems of Public Order, 53 AM. J. INT’L L. 1, 7 (1959); see also Siegfried Wiessner & Andrew R. Willard, PolicyOriented Jurisprudence and Human Rights Abus es in Internal Conflict: Toward a World Public Order of Human Dignity , 93 A M. J. INT'L L. 316, 318 (1999) (using McDougal and Lasswell’s approach to appraise individual criminal accountability for human rights violations in internal conflicts). 116. See, e.g., Lorraine E. W einrib, Constitutional Conceptions and Constitu tional Comparativism, in DEFINING THE FIELD OF COMPARATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 3, 15, 26 (Vicki C. Jackson & Mark Tushnet eds., 2002) (locating the value of dignity within postwar constitutions). 117. E.g., Gerald L. Neum an, Human Dignity in United States Constitutional Law , in ZUR AUTONOMIE DES INDIVIDUUMS [FOR INDIVIDUAL AUTONOMY] 249 (Dieter Simon & Manfred Weiss eds., 2000) (explaining the areas of m odern American constitutional law in which th e idea of hum an dignity plays a role, while no ting its inability to over come the negative character of Am erican constitutional rights); see, e.g., Hugo Adam Bedau, The Eighth Amendment, Human Dignity and the Death P enalty, in THE CONSTITUTION OF RIGHTS: HUMAN DIGNITY AND AMERICAN VALUES 151 (Michael J. Meyer & William A. Parent eds., 1992) (d iscussing Chief Justice Earl Warren and human dignity). For a recen t example, see Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003) (holding that Te xas’s ban on sodomy violates the Due Process Clause). 118. ROBERT ALEXY, A T HEORY OF CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS 290-93 (Julian Rivers trans., Oxford University Press 2002) (1986) (discu ssing the W elfare Judgment of 1951, the first numerus clausus judgment, and the University Judgment, bo th decided in the 1970s, which derived an enforceable subjective right from the protection of dignity and the right to life and other principles of the Grundgesetz). 119. See, e.g., Khosa v Minister of Social Development 2004 (6) SA 505 ( CC) at 27, 33 (S. Afr.); Mashavha v President of the RSA 2004 (12) BCLR 1243 (CC) at 29 (S. Afr.); Arthur Chaskalson, Human Dignity as a Foundational Value for Our Constitutional Order, 16 S. AFR. J. HUM. RTS 193, 204 (2000) (“[T]he social and economic rights . . . are rooted in respect for human dignity, for how can there be dignity in a life lived without access to ho using, healthcare, food, water or in the case of persons unable to support themselves, without appropriate assistance?”).