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

2011] The Right to Dignity 135
on which all of society—legal and otherwise—rests. 317 Thus, human
dignity is said to function as an allencompassing pervasive value
that forms the fabric of modern democracy, 318 even though the
practical meaning of this is not always explained. In this framework,
the right to dignity is widely invoked as both a legal ground and a
moral basis for redress of certain violations by the government or by
private individuals. However, reliance on human dignity as one of our
most basic human values is not merely confined to the legal texts and
judicial pronouncements. In pitching or touting legislative initiatives,
the political class often links policy goals to dignitary interests. 319
These statements, and others that pertain to the immutability of
dignity or its presumed high value in the minds and hearts of all
people, probably stem from the fact that they are comfortably general
and they are also quite difficult either to disagree with and disprove.
The effect of this is the impression that “[m]oralists of various sorts
use the term[] ‘human dignity’ . . . often, but frequently these words
have little more than rhetorical effect . . . .” 320
It is upon this “rhetorical effect” that the fourth possible
approach to the right to dignity depends. Legal statements of all
shapes and sizes are intended to have the effect of inducing
compliance (if legislative) or of redressing past wrongdoing (if
judicial); therefore, there is a clear practical consequence of what gets
said within these legal structures. However, there is another level of
communication that is served through observation of legal
pronouncements—that such statements represent the societal
representation of either the descriptive (what is) or the normative
(what should be). In other words, statements of law have an inherent
worth detachable from the instrumental purposes that they serve:
They are expressive. Thus, all the representations of the right to
dignity that have been detailed in this Article do not merely resolve a
case, or set forth a legislative, constitutional, or international
317. See, e.g., Martti Koskenniemi, Constitutionalism as Mindset:
Reflections on Kantian Themes about International Law and Globalization, 8
Theoretical Inquiries L. 9, 18 (2007) (referring to this as a “constitutional
mindset”).
318. See Vlad F. Perju, The Puzzling Parameters of the Foreign Law
Debate, 2007 Utah L. Rev. 167, 184.
319. See, e.g., William J. Clinton, President’s Radio Address (June 24,
2000), available at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid
=26#axzz1YzuMw6Ca (justifying additional Medicare benefits by arguing that
“we have few responsibilities more important than helping our older Americans
live out their lives with quality and in dignity.”).
320. Harris, supra note 3, at 1.