This is the fourth in our month-long series on dignity and democracy.
We are social animals. Dignity is inherent in each one of us, but we experience it – as we experience all of life – in community with others.
There’s a term that shows up a lot in African cases, ubuntu, the idea that “I am who I am through other people.” The subject is the singular “I” but the boundaries of the “I” are porous, as other people contribute to making each of us who we are.
In the Anglo-Saxon tradition, we refer to the phrase “no man is an island” as embodying our interconnectedness. The phrase originates in John Donne’s 1623 poem; the passage includes the lesser known but equally potent phrase “because I am involved in mankind.”[1] This suggests not only a fact of being but a way of being actively engaged in the world. Donne wasn’t talking about voting, but he was talking about the experience of deep connection to others (and even to the natural world around us).
The dignity of belonging encompasses both the descriptive fact and opportunity for active participation in the world. To have dignity is to have the right to belong to the community – whether local and personal or encompassing all of mankind – and to participate in the activities of the group.
Perhaps this is most clear in the negative. The worst that a social system can do is not to punish or burden one of its members but to cast them out altogether. A group of kids won’t let another sit with them or join their club. A church excommunicates (literally, casts out of the community). A culture puts people behind veils or in purdah. A society puts people behind bars and if that isn’t enough, puts them in solitary confinement – a form of torture under international law when extended.[2] A government denationalizes or exiles or deports people to make them disappear from society.
These are horrible punishments not because they are physically violent but because they do violence to our dignity-based need to belong.
Interesting research has been done on the psychological effects of ostracism that suggest that the harms caused by social ostracism align exactly with dignity harms. According to Kipling Williams, “ostracism is an interpersonally aversive behavior unique in that, compared to physical or verbal altercations, it can threaten four fundamental needs: the need to belong, the need to maintain a reasonably high self‐esteem, the need to perceive control over one's social environment, and the need to feel recognized for existing and being worthy of [respect.]”[3]
These are all aspect of dignity as it is described in the legal literature and in the caselaw. That is, casting someone out is particularly hurtful because it strikes at the precise areas of our being where our dignity resides.
But as many dignity cases have recognized, the indignity of ostracism doesn’t have to result from intentional acts. One can feel marginalized (literally not in the mainstream but on the edges of society) or isolated by mental or physical illness, poverty, disability, illiteracy, and so on. Recognizing that such isolation is still a dignity harm, courts have imposed affirmative obligations on states to take actions to ensure that all people are able to participate.
Quoting Justice Kirby of the High Court of Australia, the Indian Supreme Court has explained that the language of the UDHR that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights” embraced “every individual in our world. It did not apply only to citizens. It did not apply only to ‘white’ people. It did not apply only to good people. Prisoners, murderers and even traitors were to be entitled to the freedoms that were declared.” Navtej Singh Johar & Others v. Union of India (2018).
And the Constitutional Court of South Africa overturned laws that restricted the voting rights of people convicted of crimes: “Human dignity is in this case expressed as the right to participate in elections. Understood in these terms, the right to dignity guarantees that inmates still ‘count’, notwithstanding their incarceration." Sonke Gender Justice v. President (2020). The Court held that inmates remain members of society and are entitled to rights, except where justifiably limited and stressed the need for punishment to respect human dignity.
Excluding people from the political process is a violation of dignity because it untethers them from the communities in which they live and thrive and develop their sense of dignity. It deprives them of the ability to be who they are “through other people.”
That does not mean that every individual has the right to vote. Newborns would be ill-suited to the task. But it does present a high bar for anyone who would seek to disenfranchise an adult and it imposes on them a burden of justification strong enough to assuage the violation of dignity.
In a dignity-respecting world, the participation of all people in the political process would be facilitated and encouraged.
