DOI: 10.4324/9781003307853-9 Introduction: Dignity as a Controversial Concept Many legal scholars, practitioners, and judges could easily agree that human dignity is central to law and simultaneously disagree as to why the concept is relevant. As Schroeder notes, “pessimistically speaking, one might argue that the power of the concept lies in its vagueness” (Schroeder 2012, 326). The variety of meanings of the term “human dignity,” its lack of legal definition, as well as its ambiguousness from a philosophical point of view, have ren- dered human dignity a more controversial concept than human rights (Mack- lin 2003; Pinker 2008; Ullrich 2003). Although the concept can be clarified significantly, it is accepted that dignity has diverse meanings (Donnelly 1982; Schroeder 2010; Sensen 2011). The plurality of meaning and the lack of objective criteria to define the term “human dignity” have not prevented courts from using the term as a legal tool. Indeed, the concept has become essential in judicial making and plays a fundamental role in the adjudication of human rights’ claims (McCrud- den 2008). However, judicial interpretation of the concept of human dignity has not contributed to sketching a discernible common notion (McCrudden 2008, 712). As discussed further in this chapter, human dignity in courts has evolved as a subsidiary notion that reinforces specific human rights discourse and as a normative-axiological stand meaning the ultimate legal value or a value of humanness (Riley 2010). The complexity of debates surrounding human dignity is vast, since dignity has been discussed extensively in legal and political philosophy from differ- ent perspectives (Donnelly 2015; Habermas 2010; Shultziner 2003; Waldron 2013). Historically the notion of human dignity has unfolded in many direc- tions. In ancient Roman times, an aristocratic use of dignity developed, particu- larly in Cicero’s De officiis. Cicero argued for a universal dignitas, which imposes on human beings the duty to act conforming to reason (Sensen 2011, 83). In a similar vein, Pope Leo the Great’s sermons contain the earliest known usages of the Latin dignitas by a Christian thinker and depict human beings as elevated over the rest of nature and created in the image of God, with the duty to act accordingly. Human dignity also emerged as a prominent topic 7 A Multi-approach to Human Dignity in the European Court of Human Rights Eugenia Relaño Pastor