UMANITATEA CA SUBIECT DE DREPT

Confusing subject of study for a jurist, humanity is an evasive notion because it
manifests itself in the individual but is, at the same time, external to it; it claims universality
but the way each one looks at is as specific as each one. Myth or legal symbol, „humanity” is a
term with variable content, both in the common and the legal language, because, at the same
time, it represents the human essence, the goodness but also the race, the human species. The
various meanings are indissolubly linked because they are intertwined, so that the „individual”
humanity, the one that each individual carries himself, is inseparable from the „collective”
humanity, the human community. This together construction results from legal instruments which
reflect the ambivalence of the concept, the crime against humanity is, at the same time, a crime
against the human essence and a crime against the human race, as its constituent elements
demonstrate. Through time, humanity has born and fed contradictory legal discourses, so in
international law it is more than a „concept slogan”, because its influence is tangible, but
nonetheless, humanity has not simplified the international legal order but has made it even more
complex.