New Concept of Personality Rights in Romanian and French Law

Under the name of personality rights can be defined those rights inherent to the quality of person belonging to any individual by the very fact that he/she is a human being. Since they are rights which are attached to the person, the concept has found its origins even in antiquity, in the form of theatrical masks, in Christianity of the Middle Ages and up to the Modernity of contemporary thinkers. The concept of “personality rights” can be clearly found in the art. 58 of the Romanian Civil Code, which stipulates that “every person has the right to life, health, physical and mental integrity, dignity, an image, respect for private life, as well as other similar rights recognized by law”, and they are not transmissible. However, the French Civil Code does not regulate these rights equally clearly, but interprets them from the contents of civil rights and human body regulations, correlated with the chapters governing the examination of a person's genetic characteristics and the identification of a person by its genetic fingerprints, and brain imaging techniques.