A wide-ranging collection of essays from a leading scholar of legal ethics.

From Human Dignity to Natural Law shows how the whole of the natural law, as understood in the Aristotelian Thomistic tradition, is contained implicitly in human dignity. Human dignity means existing for one’s own good (the common good as well as one’s individual good), and not as a mere means to an alien good. But what is the true human good? This question is answered with a careful analysis of Aristotle’s definition of happiness. The natural law can then be understood as the precepts that guide us in achieving happiness. To show that human dignity is a reality in the nature of things and not a mere human invention, it is necessary to show that human beings exist by nature for the achievement of the properly human good in which happiness is found. This implies finality in nature. Since contemporary natural science does not recognize final causality, the book explains why living things, as least, must exist for a purpose and why the scientific method, as currently understood, is not able to deal with this question. These reflections will also enable us to respond to a common criticism of natural law theory: that it attempts to derive statements of what ought to be from statements about what is. After defining the natural law and relating it to human or positive law, Richard Berquist considers Aquinas’s formulation of the first principle of the natural law. It then discusses the love commandments to love God above all things and to love one’s neighbor as oneself as the first precepts of the natural law. Subsequent chapters are devoted to clarifying and defending natural law precepts concerned with the life issues, with sexual morality and marriage, and with fundamental natural rights. From Human Dignity to Natural Law concludes with a discussion of alternatives to the natural law.

In recent years, there has been an explosion of writing on the topic of human dignity across a plethora of different academic disciplines. Despite this explosion of interest, there is one group – critical legal scholars – that has devoted little if any attention to human dignity. This book argues that these scholars should attend to human dignity, a concept rich enough to support a whole range of progressive ambitions, particularly in the field of international law. It synthesizes certain liberal arguments about the good of self-authorship with the critical legal philosophy of Roberto Unger and the capabilities approach to agency of Amartya Sen, to formulate a unique conception of human dignity. The author argues how human dignity flows from an individual’s capacity for self-authorship as defined by the set of expressive capabilities s/he possesses, and the book demonstrates how this conception can enrich our understanding of international human rights law by making the amplification of human dignity its fundamental orientation.

Human dignity: social movements invoke it, several national constitutions enshrine it, and it features prominently in international human rights documents. But what is human dignity, why is it important, and what is its relationship to human rights? This book offers a sophisticated and comprehensive defence of the view that human dignity is the moral heart of human rights. First, it clarifies the network of concepts associated with dignity. Paramount within this network is a core notion of human dignity as an inherent, non-instrumental, egalitarian, and high-priority normative status of human persons. People have this status in virtue of their valuable human capacities rather than as a result of their national origin and other conventional features. Second, it shows how human dignity gives rise to an inspiring ideal of solidaristic empowerment, which calls us to support people's pursuit of a flourishing life by affirming both negative duties not to block or destroy, and positive duties to protect and facilitate, the development and exercise of the valuable capacities at the basis of their dignity. The most urgent of these duties are correlative to human rights. Third, this book illustrates how the proposed dignitarian approach allows us to articulate the content, justification, and feasible implementation of specific human rights, including contested ones, such as the rights to democratic political participation and to decent labour conditions. Finally, this book's dignitarian approach helps illuminate the arc of humanist justice, identifying both the difference and the continuity between the basic requirements of human rights and more expansive requirements of social justice such as those defended by liberal egalitarians and democratic socialists. Human dignity is indeed the moral heart of human rights. Understanding it enables us to defend human rights as the urgent ethical and political project that puts humanity first.

Ernst Bloch was one of the most original and influential of contemporary European thinkers, leaving his mark in fields ranging from philosophy and social theory to aesthetics and theology. This book represents a unique attempt to reconcile the traditional oppositions of the natural law and social utopian traditions, providing basic insights into the meaning of human rights in a socialist society.

This book is a rethinking of human dignity in relation to our principles of social governance. The result is a revisionist account of human dignity and law, one focused less on the use of human dignity in our regulations and more on its constitutive implications for the governance of the public realm.

The notion of human dignity plays a central role in human rights discourse. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognition of the inherent dignity and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. The international Covenants on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and on Civil and Political Rights state that all human rights derive from inherent dignity of the human person. Some modern constitutions include human dignity as a fundamental non-derogable right; others mention it as a right to be protected alongside other rights. It is not only lawyers concerned with human rights who have to contend with the concept of human dignity. The concept has been discussed by, inter alia, theologians, philosophers, and anthropologists. In this book leading scholars in constitutional and international law, human rights, theology, philosophy, history and classics, from various countries, discuss the concept of human dignity from differing perspectives. These perspectives help to elucidate the meaning of the concept in human rights discourse.

The individual and structural biases that affect the American healthcare system have serious emotional and physical consequences that all too often go unseen. These biases are often rooted in power, class, racial, gender or sexual orientation prejudices, and as a result, the injured parties usually lack the resources needed to protect themselves. In Healthcare and Human Dignity, individual worth, equality, and autonomy emerge as the dominant values at stake in encounters with doctors, nurses, hospitals, and drug companies. Although the public is aware of legal battles over autonomy and dignity in the context of death, the everyday patient’s need for dignity has received scant attention. Thus, in Healthcare, law professor Frank McClellan’s collection of cases and individual experiences bring these stories to life and establish beyond doubt that human dignity is of utmost priority in the everyday process of healthcare decision making.

Dignity is seen, commonly, as an ethical obligation owed to human persons. The dimensions of this obligation are subject to wide discussion and defy universal agreement. Dignity is seen, commonly, as an ethical obligation owed to human persons. Dignity as a Human Right? examines dignity within the prism of death, and more particularly, its humane and dignified management. Although there is no domestic or international right to die with dignity, within the right to life should, arguably, be a right to dignity and self-determination especially at its end-stage; for, a powerful interface exists between the right to human dignity and the very right to life, to love and humanity as well as compassion at its conclusion. Legislative efforts--nationally and internationally--have begun to recognize a right to die with dignity when a condition of medical futility exists. There are presently five states and the District of Columbia, together with a judicial interpretation from the Montana Supreme Court, which recognize death assistance for the terminally ill. Internationally, Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland are seen as leaders in this recognition. The United Nations has played a significant role in framing end-of-life decision making within the ambit of human rights protection. The UN Charter states unequivocally that the dignity and worth of the human person must be protected and safeguarded. Similarly, among other instruments, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights acknowledges that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.

The Punta del Este Declaration, and this book dedicated to elaborating upon it, is devoted to exploring the ways that human dignity for everyone everywhere can be a useful tool in helping to address the challenges and strains facing human rights in the world today. In 2018, an initiative was instigated to revitalize the human rights project by way of engaging the notion of human dignity. This resulted in the Punta Del Este Declaration on Human Dignity for Everyone Everywhere (Punta Del Este Declaration), a declaration co-authored by over 30 human rights experts from all over the world. The Punta Del Este Declaration simplifies and brings coherence to the concept of human dignity in 10 brief statements that capture the many dimensions and aspects of human dignity and the practical ways that human dignity is useful in the promotion of human rights. This book provides an overview of how the notion of human dignity has been used to strengthen human rights. It discusses how human dignity playsmany different roles in human rights discourse and has the force to revitalize the human rights project; it is the foundational principle upon which the human rights project is built. But it is also the telos, or end goal, of human rights. At the same time, it is an important evaluative mechanism for assessing how well a country is doing in the implementation of human rights. The book will be a valuable resource for all those working in the areas of International Human Rights Law, Legal Philosophy, and Law and Religion.