How Law Protects Dignity

One way in which law protects dignity is by enforcing human rights provisions that explictly or implicitly involve the protection of dignity or the prevention of degradation. But law's connection with dignity is also much deeper and more pervasive than this. In the way that it operates, in the way that it presents its requirements, in the way law expects its requirements to be taken on board and observed by those to whom the requirements are primarily addressed, in the procedural way that it organizes hearings, in the way that it sponsors argumentation, even in the way that it arranages for coercion - in all these ways, law treats humans as dignified agents, capable of self-control, with a sense of themsleves and their interests, and with the ability to respond intelligently and thoughtfully to its demands. These ideas, which originate with some comments by Lon Fuller, in "The Morality of Law," are developed extensively in the present paper. Of course it is true that law is sometimes brutal and degrading in its application; but the paper argues that it is part of law's inherently aspirational character to deal with human persons as dignified agents, and that this distinguishes legal forms of control from other modes of governance.