Constitutional Protection to Vulnerable Persons and New Rights

At the beginning of this paper we try to find the constitutional basis for the protection of the most vulnerable persons, in the context of Social State of Law. With this purpose, we call on various elements (equality, quality of life, indivisibility and universality of rights) that are used to sense the need for comprehensive protection of the individual, beyond the mere protection of rights. Subsequently, we submit to critical reflection the proliferation of new rights of difficult or impossible application in reality. This brings the devaluation and relativization of the idea and meaning of rights, endangering the credit of the Constitution and, therefore, its own normative value. In this situation, we propose two viewpoints to identify those that can properly be regarded as new rights: those whose exercise and protection are necessary to ensure the free and full development of personality, required by human dignity, and whose lesion might affect that goal; and those whose recognition or application is not contradictory, injurious or detrimental for other constitutional human rights.