Dignity Law Institute
The Dignity Law Institute is the only law school program in the country dedicated to the legal right to live with dignity.
The Dignity Law Institute offers students opportunities for experiential learning and practical applications in partnership with legal, academic, non-profit, community-based organizations in all parts of the world – all to advance the human right to dignity! The Institute houses the Dignity Rights Clinic, sponsors research opportunities, and develops working partnerships.
Dignity Law Summit: Education and Advocacy
We are excited to present the first Dignity Law Summit on April 11, 2025 at Delaware Law School. The Summit is open to all and is free for those not receiving CLE credit.
Dignity rights are at the center of what we do as teachers and lawyers. We will spend the day with law professors, students, lawyers, and advocates work to advance the dignity rights of all people, locally and globally. We’ll talk about the different forms that teaching and advocating for dignity can take, whether it involves working in prisons, or advocating for reproductive justice, or simply telling the story from the perspective of all who are impacted.
You can register here.
What are dignity rights?
Dignity law is an emerging area of the law that seeks to ensure that every person, everywhere can freely develop their personality, can live with dignity, and will be treated by others with dignity. It is the area of law that is dedicated to what is most important in the human experience. Dignity rights are the rights we have as human beings to protect our inherent human dignity.
Dignity law has been a part of international human rights law for more than 75 years, when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirmed that “all members of the human family are born equal in dignity and rights.” Since then, it has proliferated throughout international and regional human rights law and into the constitutional law of most nations on earth.
With the help of Delaware Law students, the American Bar Association passed a Resolution in 2019 committing to dignity rights. “The American Bar Association affirms that human dignity — the inherent, equal, and inalienable worth of every person — is foundational to a just rule of law; and … urges governments to ensure that “dignity rights” – the principle that human dignity is fundamental to all areas of law and policy — be reflected in the exercise of their legislative, executive, and judicial functions.
Dignity rights allow us to protect and promote our inherent and equal dignity and worth. Because dignity is connected to every important aspect of our lives – from how we feel to how we communicate with others, to how we live, and how we are treated by others – dignity rights include civil and political rights (like freedom of speech and voting rights), and economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights (like the right to health care, to decent housing, to a living wage, to protection from the impacts of climate change). Because these rights are inherent, by virtue simply of being a person, and inalienable, we have these rights throughout our lives, no matter who we are or what we do. They protect the essential part of the human experience.
What does the Dignity Law Institute do?
The Dignity Law Institute works with local and partners to protect dignity through law.
Current projects: Locally, we are working with the American Civil Liberties Union, Delaware the Delaware Law Related Education Center (DELREC), and the Narrative Justice Project. Globally, we are working with law schools in India, Brazil, and elsewhere to expand dignity law education and awareness.
The Dignity Law Institute at Delaware Law School has a special relationship with the American Bar Association. Students in our classes helped draft the ABA’s Resolution and Report recognizing Dignity Rights. To implement the new policy, the ABA Center for Human Rights established the Dignity Rights Initiative which currently houses many resources produced by Institute faculty and students. On their website, you can find a databases of legal provisions and nearly 500 judicial decisions and a collection of short videos about dignity rights, including this video on the dignity right to vote.
About the Director
Erin Daly is Professor Emerita of Law and the Director of the Dignity Rights Clinic. She is a Fulbright and the author of numerous books about dignity law, including Dignity Rights: Courts, Constitutions and the Worth of the Human Person, the first book to show how courts around the world are using dignity rights and values to strengthen political engagement while redefining what it means to be human in the modern world. With Clinic students, she published Dignity in the Criminal Legal System: A Policy Guide for Advocacy and Reform (available for free download) and with Professor Emeritus Jimmy May, she co-authored Dignity Law: Global Recognition, Cases, and Perspectives (W.S. Hein 2020). In 2025, Stanford University Press will publish Dignity in America: Transforming Social Conflicts, a deep dive into how a dignity lens can help transform some of the nation’s most divisive conflicts, including abortion, affirmative action, poverty, climate change, and even democracy itself.
Erin directs the Dignity Rights Clinic which she co-teaches with Dwayne Bensing, Legal Director of the Delaware ACLU. She has served as Interim Dean and Vice Dean of Widener University Delaware Law School and currently serves as Global Liaison for Foreign Programs in the Graduate, International, Compliance, and Legal Studies Program.
She currently serves as the US National Correspondent for the Centre international de droit comparé de l’environnement (CIDCE), where she chaired the drafting committee for a UN International Covenant on Environmental Rights in 2023. In 2024, she presented testimony on dignity rights to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in its hearings on climate change. She works with the Université de la Fondation Aristide (UNIFA) in Haiti. She holds a Presidential Appointment to the American Bar Association Dignity Rights Initiative.
Director: Erin Daly
Affiliated Faculty
Randle De Falco
Romie Griesmer
Alicia Kelly
Geeta Kohli Tewari
Keeshea Turner
Margaret Zhang
For more information, please email [email protected].