Dignity Law Institute

Dignity Law Symposium: The Role of the State in Protecting Human Dignity

We are excited to present the annual Dignity Law Conference on April 10, 2026 at Delaware Law School. The Summit is open to all and is free for those not receiving CLE credit.

Dignity is the bedrock of the international human rights regime and has been the foundation of civil rights activism in the United States and around the world. It has been expressly named and recognized as a legal term in many national constitutions, and in key domestic and international case law. The American Bar Association (ABA) affirmed in a 2019 Resolution that “human dignity – the inherent, equal, and inalienable worth of every person – is foundational to a just rule of law.” The ABA has further said that dignity is “fundamental to all areas of law and policy.”

How, then, is human dignity meant to be protected across the many diverse bodies of law and regulatory frameworks that govern our daily lives? What precisely is the role of the state in ensuring that the protection of human dignity is advanced as part of the pursuit of a “just rule of law”?

This Symposium explores these questions in several legal arenas, including reproductive rights, immigration, criminal punishment, employment discrimination and the global arms trade. By convening leading law professors, scholars, students and advocates who work to advance dignity in their legal practice and study, the event will provide an opportunity to reflect on precisely what it means to advance dignity in specific illustrative contexts. Further, the discussion will include consideration of both the achievements and shortcomings in state actions to protect dignity rights thus far, and forward-looking analyses of what it would look like to fully enshrine the promise of dignity rights in state practice.

The Symposium’s strength lies not just in the expertise of the panelists and speakers convened, but also in the robust and diverse experiences and perspectives among participants. We hope you will join us for this timely and important conversation.

Dignity, Discrimination, and Work Panel

Policymakers across the political spectrum would likely agree that discrimination based on a person’s characteristics not related to a given benefit (whether the benefit is a work opportunity, public benefits, or the right not to be detained) undermines human dignity—the inherent, equal, and inalienable worth of every person. Yet in furtherance of that nondiscriminatory dignity, some humans’ dignity recently appears to be prioritized in law and policymaking over others’. For instance, federal policymakers aggressively pursue employment discrimination claims on behalf of White men, while refusing to pursue claims on behalf of transgender individuals. Meanwhile, other policymakers champion the “dignity of work” as a prerequisite to public benefits and healthcare coverage.

This panel will parse through these shifting dignity narratives within the contexts of discrimination and work, explaining whether recent developments undermine or support human dignity, and providing suggestions for proposals that would protect human dignity going forward.

American Immigration Indignities Panel

Migrants have always been a population vulnerable to demonization and attack. In the current moment, the indignity of US practices and policies around immigration and border security are actively advertised by the Trump administration as part of efforts discourage migration to the US and encourage so-called “self-deportations” among undocumented individuals already living in the US. The regime has also taken the unprecedented step of deploying the military to carry out mass immigration raids in various locales across the country, along with other extreme anti-immigrant steps.

This panel seeks to map out and explore the genesis and legal ramifications of these ongoing “immigration indignities.” It does so through the lenses of both domestic and international law grounded at least partially in the protection and promotion of human dignity.

The US in the World: Dignity and Security Assistance

The United States is a major purveyor of assistance to other countries, and the Foreign Assistance Act is a primary source of law regulating U.S. aid. The Act explicitly states that the purpose of U.S. development assistance is to help people globally “satisfy their basic needs and lead lives of decency, dignity, and hope” (emphasis added). But beyond development assistance, the U.S. is also the world’s largest arms dealer, and a major source of security assistance to state and non-state security forces globally. The Foreign Assistance Act includes several explicit regulations of security assistance meant to protect human rights alongside security. Of course, the international human rights framework that these provisions are meant to reflect is itself centered on the protection of dignity, as codified for example, in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights protecting against the arbitrary deprivation of life (“Recognizing that these rights derive from the inherent dignity of the human person...”).

This panel will review how current law already contemplates the protection and promotion of human dignity in regulating security assistance, how the United States government implements those laws, what enforcement mechanisms exist as a corrective, and what, if any, additional legal protections are needed.

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.