Abstract Human dignity reflects the notion of the equal worth of everyone, everywhere. It is reflected in law in treaties, constitutions, and statutes, and by courts and claims by counsel. Astonishingly, however, dignity’s role in national and subnational jurisprudence in the United States is largely overlooked, a condition this paper aims to address. Dignity’s diaspora is observed normatively throughout time and space. Scores of philosophers, prophets and social justice pioneers (and some political leaders) pontificated about dignity. But dignity is law as well as norm. Dignity in law enjoys deep and wide spatiality. Dignity is foundational to the United Nations, the Universal Declaration on Human Right, both international human rights covenants, some regional conventions, and various international and multilateral treaties. Most national constitutions recognize dignity, with dozens providing subjective rights to human dignity. Moreover, hundreds of courts worldwide have issued thousands of legal decisions invoking dignity. Its role in law is wide, deep and trenchant. Dignity’s legal footprint is slowly enlarging in jurisprudence in the United States. It has made regular appearances in cases across the legal spectrum, including those involving criminal justice, discrimination, employment, the environment, and other matters. For a generation the U.S. Supreme Court regularly invoked human dignity, including in cases involving capital punishment, reproductive rights, and same sex relations. Yet its role here has recently waned. Dignity plays a larger role in legal outcomes at the subnational level in the United States, if modestly and mostly concerning the dignity rights of crime victims. Yet here, too, dignity almost never succeeds as a stand-alone right. To the contrary, dignity most often plays a supporting role in vindicating other rights, such as to privacy, non-discrimination or speech. This can be due to any number of circumstances, including ignorance within the legal culture, resistance within the judiciary, or that those most likely subject to suffer a dignity deprivation are least likely to be able to do something about it. Outcomes suggest dignity’s role in law in America is either largely nascent or practically inconsequential.
James R. May (Thu,) studied this question.