The Development of Human Rights Protection in Cross-border Personality Rights and Tort Conflict Laws

XU Weigong & ZHANG Yajun

Abstract: Personality rights are basic rights related to human dignity in the concept of human rights protection, and respect for personality rights is the basic prerequisite for safeguarding other human rights. Human rights protection exerts a profound impact on the value of legislation and enforcement practices of private international laws in the field of cross-border personality rights infringement in various countries, which is mainly manifested in the integration of substantive justice and the humanistic care concept of protecting the rights of vulnerable groups into formal justice, and expands the development space of human rights protection ideas in cross-border personality rights and tort conflict laws. The diversity of human rights protection values determines that cross-border personality rights infringement may lead to conflicts between personality rights and other basic rights, such as freedom of speech. To reconcile such conflicts, a workable method is to prioritize personality rights protection in accordance with the hierarchy of rights theory in the value judgment of public order reservation or to clarify the limits of the right holder’s tolerance obligation through the limited application of the principle of proportionality. China’s current cross-border personality rights and tort conflict law can optimize the protection of the rights of vulnerable groups by diversifying the options of available legal methods, and establish a balancing mechanism between personality rights and freedom of speech, so as to improve China’s legal protection system for human rights in the field of foreign-related civil and commercial affairs.

Keywords: human rights protection · protection of the rights of vulnerable groups · substantive justice · personality rights and tort conflict laws