Why dignity?
This website is designed to be a global and freely open resource for anyone interested in how the idea of human dignity can change the way we think about law, politics, and the world we want to live in.
Human dignity isn’t just a nice idea. Every day, judges are holding governments responsible for treating people with dignity. They are ensuring that police treat people in custody with dignity, they are protecting minorities and people with different abilities from discrimination, they are requiring governments to ensure that everyone has access to shelter and food and adequate health care and a clean environment. They are guaranteeing the right to vote. And so on.
This is happening in all parts of the world, from Pakistan to Peru, from Israel to India, and from Spain to South Africa. It is happening in Canada and Mexico and, slowly, it’s coming to the United States.
This site shows how law and policies are being reshaped around the simple but powerful idea of human dignity, the idea that every person has inherent and equal human worth.
Dignity rights are important because they are endowed to everyone born “a member of the human family.” And it gives rise to inviolable and inalienable rights – no matter what. Because you have inherent human dignity, you have the right to:
Have agency over your life – to live as you wish, to have control over the choices you make about your life.
Live with dignity – to live in adequate shelter, with nutritious food and clean water, with access to education and health care
Be treated with dignity – to interact with others on the basis of equal dignity, to be protected from humiliation and discrimination.
Dignity rights cases are doing two really important things.
Dignity rights cases are helping to define – as a legal matter – what it means to be a person in the 21st century. If an alien from another planet were to land here and what to know what human beings are, they could read the cases and learn that human beings are things who are unique but live together in a society, who have certain biological needs like food and water and a clean and healthy environment, who like to express themselves in ways that come from inside them but who like their privacy and their boundaries, and who, at best, treat each other in ways that helps each one fully develop and thrive. These are all lessons we learn from the dignity caselaw. And because it’s describing humanity, it’s pretty consistent throughout the globe. People in all countries in all societies want and need these things.
But these cases aren’t merely descriptive. They’re law and they direct government action (and sometimes private action). So, second, these cases are defining the limits of government power to ensure that human dignity is respected. If those with governmental (and military) authority have absolute power, they can invade people’s privacy, impose limits on the way people live, and even control their body and their identity. Courts attentive to human dignity are ensuring that government power is limited so that each person can live “as a person,” with full and complete respect for their human dignity.
Dignity law is essential to freedom.