Dignity, as value and importance

To give something dignity is to give it value, to make it seem important.

But value and importance are not synonyms. They are complementary concepts. Value is a noun that indicates worth; some things have intrinsic value and for other things, their value is only given by others, extrinsically. A diamond may be valuable because it can be sold for a lot of money or because it is meaningful for the person who owns it. An idea can be a valuable contribution to a conversation. And you can value someone’s opinion. Either way, the thing is deemed to have worth that should be recognized and protected.

Importance is a relative term. A thing’s importance only comes into play when it is compared with something of lesser importance. Everything on a “to do” list can be valuable in the sense that it is worth doing, but we rank the items to indicate which are more important than others.

In basing the human rights agenda on the foundation of dignity, the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) meant to give human beings both of these attributes. They said all members of the human family have value, or worth. And then they said that everyone has equal value, that we are all equally important. Both are necessary and they complement one another; neither does the work alone.

Value and worth as attributes of the human person go to the constitutional protections of liberty and equality.

Because human beings have inherent worth, the law should protect their liberty; thus, courts that protect dignity protect the each person’s freedom to make decisions for themselves, to plan their life courses, to fully develop their unique personalities.

In the US, this is what underpinned the Supreme Court’s privacy jurisprudence that protected rights relating to family and marriage – these were decisions that were so close to a person’s identity that they could not be “formed under compulsion of the State.” Protecting people’s liberty to make these kinds of decisions was necessary to ensure that each person could participate “in the economic and social life of the nation” (as a plurality of the Court said in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, now overturned by Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization).

The plurality in Casey made the point explicitly:

“Our law affords constitutional protection to personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education.... These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.” (Because the Court overturned Casey, this is no longer good law, but it is still one of the clearest articulations of dignity in US constitutional law).

So, too, did the Court in Obergefell v. Hodges in protecting same-sex marriage:

“The fundamental liberties protected by this Clause include most of the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights. In addition, these liberties extend to certain personal choices central to individual dignity and autonomy, including intimate choices that define personal identity and beliefs.”

It is for this reason, too, that laws that ensure people’s right to choose how and when to die are called “Death with Dignity” Acts.

But liberty is of little value to us if we can be ranked like items on a “to do” list. One of the radical innovations of the UDHR was to wrest the idea of dignity away from its historical association with rank and status and to recognize that the worth of all people must be equal in all of us – that if a king is important, then a commoner is of equal importance; that if men are important, then women, too, are of equal importance. And that if any one person has inherent value, then every other person has equal inherent value.

This is why the Obergefell Court found that laws prohibiting same-sex marriage violated both the liberty guarantee and the equality guarantee of the Constitution:

“The Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause are connected in a profound way, though they set forth independent principles. … Under the Constitution, same-sex couples seek in marriage the same legal treatment as opposite-sex couples, and it would disparage their choices and diminish their personhood to deny them this right.

We must all be equally important, we must all have equal liberty, we must all have equal opportunity to participate in the social and economic life of the nation, and we must all have equal rights to protect our humanity and to have it respected. Because “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” (UDHR, Art. 1).

Both the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights associate dignity with worth, both associate it with equality, and both associate it with rights – that is the human rights to protect one’s equal worth. On some readings, the US Constitution does too.