According to the Court, it follows that cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishments are strictly prohibited by the ‘commandment of human dignity’: and, in the more recent Honecker Decision, the Court suggested that human dignity is violated where an individual is ‘degraded to a mere object of state action’ by being kept in custody when he is seriously ill and close to death. Although this latter suggestion was controversial, the deeper idea that human dignity is violated where persons are subjected to conditions that are demeaning or degrading is commonly relied on—not merely in the context of deprivation of liberty, but also in relation to housing and employment conditions.