Dignity and Happiness

Years ago, I asked students in my Administrative Law class: what is the purpose of government? One woman’s hand immediately shot up and responded: “To make people happy.” She was a veteran, recently returned from Iraq, so she’d spent some time thinking about the purpose of government. Her answer was instinctual, but also reasoned. And like any good law student, she could support it with sources – namely, the Declaration of Independence.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Happiness shows up twice in this famous paragraph of the Declaration: once to say that happiness is a God-given right, along with life and liberty. And, second, to say that the people have a right to a government that will “effect” their safety and happiness.[1]

It’s there in the Declaration, as a basis of rights and, along with safety, as the very purpose of government.

In a recent interview, Senator Chris Murphy said of the Declaration that “maybe the most radical phrase in that founding document is that the government owes a right to its citizens to pursue happiness.”

Americans usually think about happiness as a state of mind, an emotional state, usually more elusive than real. (In 2024, the United States dropped out of the top 20 happiest countries to 24 in the World Happiness Report). We don’t typically think of it as relevant to governance or dependent on government policies, but it is.

Now, you might be thinking: how can government make me happy? How can it even know what will make me happy?

But Senator Murphy makes a distinction here: “The underlying assumption is that the government has a responsibility not to deliver you the last mile toward a happy, meaningful life, but to set the conditions upon which individuals can pursue happiness.”

So government’s job is not to make people happy, but to create conditions that will conduce to greater happiness and to make it easier instead of harder for people to live in happiness. That is not only a condition of humanity, but a right of a free people. And in freedom, it is the right of people to find happiness and to define their own happiness for themselves; it is oxymoronic to ask government to make  people happy since that would deny people’s freedom.

In that sense, dignity and happiness are birds of a feather. Dignity is the law’s way of talking about happiness. Indeed, it’s precisely because dignity and happiness are so closely correlated that the government can’t make you happy, any more than it can give you dignity. But it can treat you with dignity (e.g. by according due process even in administrative proceedings[2] and speaking to and about people with respect), it can help you live with dignity (e.g. by promoting economic policies that ensure that people have leisure time to spend in community with others[3] and reducing economic stressors[4]), and it can promote policies that make people feel valued and connected and that help people find meaning in their lives.

It may be difficult to define happiness for purposes of government policymaking, though Bhutan has famously started down that road. It defines happiness in terms of nine domains and sets government policy according to its capacity for further happiness: Psychological well-being, health, education, time use, cultural diversity and resilience, good governance, community vitality, ecological diversity and resilience, and living standards. These correlate remarkably closely with how we think about what it means to live with dignity.

The United States obviously doesn’t need to follow the model of Bhutan. But it wouldn’t hurt us to think more about how we can use government to enhance our own happiness, as our founding generation urged.  They understood that government policies matter to people and they matter precisely because they can “effect their safety and happiness.”

[1] “Effect” here does not mean “affect” in the sense of impact their safety and happiness, but to give effect to, or to realize or conduce to their safety and happiness.

[2] Goldberg v. Kelly , 397 U.S. 254 (1970).

[3] According to Senator Murphy, “There’s been a 60 percent reduction in the amount of time that we spend with friends and companions in the last 20 years.”

[4] The Duke Personal Assistance Survey notes that “According to a recent CNN survey, 71% of Americans identify money as a significant cause of stress in their lives. Further, 76% of households live paycheck-to-paycheck and credit card debt is growing.” See also Ryu, S., Fan, L. The Relationship Between Financial Worries and Psychological Distress Among U.S. Adults. J Fam Econ Iss 44, 16–33 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-022-09820-9.