Most constitutional democracies recognize a right of privacy explicitly in their constitution. In many of the countries privacy is not explicitly recognized in the constitution, such as the United States, Ireland and India, the courts have found constitutional protection to the right to privacy in other provisions. Different systems of constitutional interpretation will result in different scopes of the right to privacy. The boundaries and content of what is considered the private domain which ought to be protected from state (or private) intervention vary between political and social cultures.

The constitutional right to privacy may underpins different key values. Many believe that the connection between the values of Liberty and Human Dignity to the constitutional right of privacy is essential for understanding the right's meaning and scope. Liberty and Human Dignity are both core values which are considered to be the foundation of modern democratic societies. Liberty is the founding value of the American Revolution and it has an important role in the United States' constitutional scheme. Human Dignity has a long history. Originally, it was rooted in the theological concept of the human creation in the image of God. In the modern context, Human Dignity mainly function as an extension of the Kantian Enlightenment-era concepts. It became a constitutional right only in post-World War II constitutional democracies. This is the case in Germany, South Africa, Poland, and Israel, where human dignity is regarded to be an important constitutional right.

In "Three Concepts of Privacy", Robert Post distinguishes the contrast between privacy as an aspect of Human Dignity and privacy as an aspect of Liberty. Post argues that "Privacy as dignity safeguards the socialized aspects of the self; privacy as freedom safeguards the spontaneous, independent, and uniquely individual aspects of the self. […] Privacy as dignity seeks to eliminate differences by bringing all persons within the bounds of a single normalized community; privacy as freedom protects individual's autonomy by nullifying the reach of that community" (Post, p.2095). In "The Two Western Cultures of Privacy: Dignity Versus Liberty", James Q. Whitman asserts that while continental privacy protections are a form of protection of a right to respect and personal dignity, the American right to privacy is the right to freedom from intrusions by the state, especially in one's own home. The prime enemy of privacy according to the continental conception is any actor which spared humiliation and danger our public dignity (Whitman, p.1161). However, the prime danger from the American point of view, is that "the sanctity of [our] home[s]," will be breached by government actors (Whitman, p.1162). Indeed, under the American paradigm "liberty protects the person from unwarranted government's intrusions into a dwelling or other private places" (Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003)).

A Liberty-based-right to privacy would be established on ideas of individual will and consent, while a Dignity-based-right to privacy rests on recognition of the person’s physical and mental integrity, his humanity, and his value as a person. The first insists that individuals should be allowed to define themselves. The second "depends upon intersubjective norms that define the forms of conduct that constitute respect between persons" (Post, p.2092). Individuals may approve certain actions which would infringe their Dignity. A voluntary slavery might pose less Liberty concerns than Human Dignity ones. Our approval to publicly present our body after our death might not infringe the right to Liberty but in certain circumstances would violate the Dignity of the dead person. Nonetheless, in many cases both Human Dignity and Liberty would protect the same domain, due to their common concern about individual's autonomy.

The state of Israel was established as a collectivist and socialist society. Only from the seventies of the last century Israeli society started to shift towards an individualistic and liberal values. The enactment of the 1992 Israeli Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty initiated a new constitutional era in Israel, under which Human Dignity became the corner stone of the Israeli bill of rights. The Israeli Supreme Court treated Human Dignity as a “framework right” or a “mother-right” from which derivative rights may be generated and emphasized its important role in the Israeli constitutional schema. Section 7 of the Basic Law expressly protects the right to privacy of all persons. The Israeli Supreme Court has repeatedly pointed out that the constitutional right to privacy is closely related to Human Dignity. In this respect, the Israeli understanding and interpretation of the right to privacy is more similar to the continental paradigm than to the Anglo-American tradition.

However, although this observation may reflect the underline core value and content of the constitutional right to privacy in Israel, it does not fully reflect the actual extent of the right's protection. The extent of the right's protection prescribes the legal limitations on the exercise of the right within its scope. Limitations on constitutional rights may be justified if they satisfy constitutional scrutiny. Under Israeli Proportionality scrutiny, the question is whether the legal limitations promote a proper purpose and whether they are rationally connected to that purpose and necessary. Also, the weight of the marginal social importance of the benefits must be heavier than the weight of the marginal social importance of preventing the harm.

In this respect, the gap between the scope of the Israeli constitutional Dignity-based-right to privacy and its actual realization is in many ways a result of the Israeli social experience and the security threats and challenges which it faces. In a place where restaurants and public buses are under a serious terror threat, the infringement of the right to privacy by searching one's bugs for explosives would be more tolerable from a constitutional point of view. In this instance, the right to Human Dignity may support both sides. It would underpin both the right to privacy and the purposes for limiting it (the person’s physical and mental integrity).