Dignity in America: Transforming Social Conflicts

How dignity transforms, and resolves, some of the country’s most pressing social problems.

Dignity represents the inherent and equal worth of each one of us. It is how we think about the value of our lives. It is how we think about justice, and about the injustices that cause people to struggle and suffer. In Dignity in America, Erin Daly explores how we can resolve the social conflicts that divide us as a nation by transforming them under the lens of human dignity.

It may apply differently in different cultural settings, but the core meaning of dignity is both intuitive and universal. It stands for a set of interlocking ideas that focus on each person’s need to freely develop their full personality and identity. Using the language of dignity that has already taken root in international law and courts all around the world, Daly shows us how to think about controversies, ranging from affirmative action to abortion to climate justice to democracy, with a view toward enhancing our ability to live with dignity.

Daly presents dignity as a universal value that transcends partisan debates and, in many cases, presents a clear path to the most just solutions to the conflicts that divide us as a nation. She introduces the American voting public to the idea of dignity by posing and wrestling with a series of questions: How can we insist on a politics that really protects human dignity? How can we use the idea of dignity to guide us toward solutions that allow more people to live each day with more of it?

If we pay attention to the core needs of people in society, we can make political choices that better protect us all, allowing us to flourish as individuals while living in communities based on justice for all.

Erin Daly is Professor of Law at Widener University Delaware Law School and the Director of the Dignity Rights Clinic, the world’s first legal clinic dedicated to advancing the dignity rights of people around the world. She is the author of Dignity Rights: Courts, Constitutions, and the Worth of the Human Person (2012; 2020).