On 12 May 2017, Widener University Delaware Law School hosted the first Virtual Workshop on Dignity Rights to galvanize a global conversation about putting dignity rights into action in a wide range of social and legal contexts. The Dignity Rights Project was established in 2016 by Professors Jimmy May and Erin Daly to set dignity in action through public and professional education, litigation, and support for high-impact lawyering. The Project works in partnership with community and legal advocates seeking to advance dignity in its diverse manifestations. To begin dialogue and outreach, the Inaugural Virtual Workshop in May featured brief presentations by scholars-activists on dignity rights in particular contexts:

• Privacy and constitutional interpretation (Stephen Kass)
• Tribal identity in the United States (Chief Dennis J. Coker & Tomasz G. Smolinski)
• Treatment of inmates (Judy Ritter)
• Environmental rights in theory (Dina Townsend), and in the lives of people in facing particular environmental threats (Ngozi Stewart in Nigeria; Richard Laster and Dan Livney in Israel, Alexandra Aragao in Latin America).

Other participants focused on regional recognition of dignity rights including in the Americas (Juan Rivero Godoy), Europe (Catherine Dupré), and in the transformative legal culture in Bhutan (Stephan Sonnenberg). Kacee Benson, a Delaware Law School student also presented on her work in the Dignity Rights Practicum offered by May and Daly.

At the outset, Stephen Kass – practicing attorney with Carter, Ledyard & Milburn in New York City, founding member of Human Rights Watch, and on the Board of the National Center of Law and Economic Justice – asked whether we are on the cusp of a constitutional revolution: Dignity, he notes, "touches not only on an individual’s claim to be respected, but also on a collective or communal demand for respect from the larger society. Indeed, dignity may also be seen as part of our individual and communal relationship to the natural world and even other species." But these are not simply academic questions:

"Our inquiry here is to discover and call out these underlying themes that give rise to a newly and more broadly recognized right to dignity, a concept that may, in some contexts, prove amenable to a broader range of remedies than simple judicial enforcement of “rights.” This is, in my view, a timely, even urgent, inquiry because so many individual rights are either under assault or facing challenges from a changing physical environment, changing mores and changing (and increasingly fragile) legal and political institutions. Whether dignity will rise above these challenges, as privacy has, and help usher in revitalized national and international norms is the subject that our program seeks to explore. With persistence, good humor and, if we are lucky, a small share of Brandeis’s prescience, perhaps we can take the first steps toward that goal."

In closing, Professor Catherine Dupré – author of The Age of Dignity and Associate Professor in Comparative Constitutional Law at the University of Exeter (UK) – noted that, globally, we speak in a common language of dignity: "Dignity is anchored in a sense of (in)justice understood in rich (and novel) ways, e.g. social, territorial, environmental justice. Dignity is not just about life, but a certain quality of life.”

“As the concept is still new in many parts of the world and in many legal systems, using dignity as the Project intends to do will almost inevitably raise issues of fit with the more established ways of doing things and thinking about rights and justice… The concept of dignity is about acknowledging and promoting a particular image of human beings with their full range of freedoms and aspirations, and in their complex interactions with time, space, fellow human beings and themselves.”

Moving forward, Dupré concluded that the Inaugural Workshop confirmed that part of the mission of the Dignity Rights Project is "about constructing robust, meaningful and user-friendly definitions for dignity as a right and a tool for protecting humanity and promoting justice."

"In this process we will have to negotiate a tension between constructing a clear concept of dignity so that we can use it as an effective tool on the one hand, and keeping dignity open to a range of meanings and developments on the other. We will have to test, and take stock of, our definition(s) and uses of dignity and monitor their developments; moreover we will need to discuss boundaries and, as the case may be, exclude issues as being irrelevant to the Dignity Rights Project. Finally, human dignity, if it is to make a difference, has to be approached and constructed in a novel manner. This will require us to think in very new ways and, while this may challenge some of our deeper ways of working and thinking, this is also a very exciting part of the adventure."

Readers are encouraged to contact Jimmy May (jrmay@widener.edu) or Erin Daly (edaly@widener.edu) if they would like to be on the Dignity Rights Workshop mailing list or to participate in the next Dignity Rights Virtual Workshop, to be held in November 2017. 

      Photo: DRP