The Right to Dignity Rex D. Glensy - Columbia Law School

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74 COLUMBIA HUMAN RIGHTS LAW REVIEW [43:65 that focuses on human dignity. 40 Conferences and symposia have also been organized to discuss the merits and demerits of “Law and Human Dignity,” such as that presented by the Federalist Society in 2003 and reported in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy in the same year. 41 However, the idea that the law must accommodate human dignity is by no means novel. On the contrary, theories of human dignity have their origins in antiquity. Cicero believed that all human beings were endowed with dignitas, and that therefore all mankind is worthy of respect for the sole fact of its existence. 42 According to Cicero, this attribute was universal because human beings possessed “superior minds,” which gave them the capacity to think and be self aware. 43 However, Cicero’s articulation of dignitas as an inherent quality was the minority view; the more common view was that dignitas was an acquired trait, an indication of high social or political status. 44 Hence, Roman dignity was “a manifestation of personal authority” which symbolized “majesty, greatness . . . decorum, and moral qualities.” 45 It was a characteristic typically ascribed to those in high office. 46 Apart from the theories of Cicero, dignity did not move from a feature of the privileged to an aspect intrinsic to everyone until the Renaissance. It was then that the notion of human dignity was characterized as being derived from a “transcendent source,” which originally was to be found in God. 47 Philosophers such as Giovanni Pico della Mirandola decoupled human dignity from social hierarchy and deemed that it was mankind’s free will, a gift from God to all 40. See David Luban, Legal Ethics and Human Dignity 66 (2007) (arguing that “upholding human dignity” is “what makes the practice of law worthwhile”). 41. See 27 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 1–421 (2003) (featuring articles discussing dignity and its relationship to laws surrounding issues including technology, punishment, religion, social welfare, diversity and abortion). 42. Cicero, De Officiis I 30 (William McCartney ed., Edinburgh 1798) (1481). 43. Id. 44. See Englard, supra note 22, at 1904 (“In Rome, the original meaning of dignity (dignitas) referred to an acquired social and political status . . . .”) (italics in original). 45. Id. 46. See Hubert Cancik, ‘Dignity of Man’ and ‘Personal’ in Stoic Anthropology: Some Remarks on Cicero, De Officiis I 105107, in D. Kretzmer & E. Klein, The Concept of Human Dignity in Human Rights Discourse 19, 19 (2002). Interestingly, this elitist definition of dignity was that used by the writers of The Federalist Papers. See infra note 66 and accompanying text. 47. See Mahlmann, supra note 12, at 18.
2011] The Right to Dignity 75 without regard to rank, that was the root of the inherent dignity of individual humans. 48 Thomas Aquinas went further, asserting that the intrinsic dignity of humans is related to the fact that humans, being made in the image of God, reflect the values of the divine. 49 This impetus from theological thought did not confine these ideas to religion. Hugo Grotius, in contemplating the appropriate disposal of human remains on a battlefield, counseled that they should not be left for beasts to prey upon because the dignity of man demands burial. 50 Even to this day, “[w]orld religions are important sources for the conception of human dignity.” 51 The Second Vatican Council stated that human dignity, defined as being “endowed with reason and free will,” created the inherently human need to seek the truth and abide by it. Most importantly, conforming to the truth (which Vatican II understood as being primarily religious) flowed from a place of free religious choice, and could not be achieved “from external coercion.” 52 In this way, Vatican II translated a possibly nebulous religious postulate into a firm legal exhortation: that individuals be free from government infringement upon the freedom of religion on account of their inherent human dignity. Pope Benedict XVI has emphasized how this concept is to be translated into legal rules. He has expressed his skepticism that the modern state can fulfill “the aspirations of persons, communities and entire peoples,” and therefore noted that it is not well equipped to create “a social order respectful of the dignity and rights of the person.” 53 He further stated that the dignity of man is the locus of human rights, and these rights 48. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, De hominis dignitate, Heptaplus, De ente et uno, e scritti vari [On the Dignity of Man, On being the One, Heptaplus] (E. Garin ed., 1942), reprinted in Library of Liberal Arts 5 (Charles Glenn Wallis trans., The BobbsMerrill Company, Inc., 1965); see also Vatican Council (2D: 19621965), Declaration on Religious Freedom, reprinted in The Sixteen Documents of Vatican II 398 (Daughers of St. Paul, N.C.W.C. trans., St. Paul Eds., 1965) (pronouncing that human dignity follows from “reason and free will”). 49. Thomas G. Weinandy, Aquinas on Doctrine 233 (2004) (“Aquinas maintains the Godgiven dignity of individual persons . . . .”); see also Catechism of the Catholic Church 424 (2d ed. 1997) (“The dignity of the human person is rooted in his creation in the image and likeness of God . . . .”). 50. Hugo Grotius, De Jure Belli 250 (trans. A.C. Campbell, London 1814) (1625). 51. Mahlmann, supra note 12, at 14 (stating that central to the idea of human dignity are religious creation accounts wherein human beings are created in the likeness of God). 52. Vatican Council, supra note 48, at 399. 53. Benedict XVI, supra note 17, 10.
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