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Th The purpose of this text is to analyze the limits to criminal intervention arising from the constitutional content of human dignity, understood as the inviolability of the physical and moral integrity of the individual, but not before specifying, in a very brief manner, the function of the principle of respect for human dignity in criminal law in general, and the way in which different powers that characterize this principle according to its elaboration by the Constitutional Court are configured as limits to the criminal power of the State. To this end, an analysis of the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court is carried out using tools of constitutional and criminal dogma. The paper proposes that, in spite of the jurisprudential diaspora and the complexity of the concept of human dignity, it is possible to derive a content from it that serves as a limitation of criminal law within the framework of the Rule of Law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the concept of human dignity on the Colombian legal system and the problems of this concept for the construction of a right-based system. In this order, the paper analyzes the pressure that human rights discourse has putted on the modern criminal systems, connected to an exclusive view of human dignity, which has helped the expansion of the power of the State to punish and leaded to legitimate a harsher criminal law. Starting from jurisprudence, fundamental rights theory and by human dignity as limit for the power of the State to punish, the paper studies the content of the 1st Article from the Colombian penal code, particularly analyzing the specific guarantees that could be derived from the different aspects of human dignity: as perimeter of human behavior, as equality mandate, as autonomy in the life project design and, finally, as protection of intangible goods such as physical and moral well-being. The limits for the criminal law derived from the guarantees built from human dignity are part from the 1st Article of Colombian penal code and are ties that works on the creation of criminal laws and on the sentencing process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]