Dignity Law Institute
The Dignity Rights Institute is the only law school program in the country dedicated to the legal right to live with dignity.
The Dignity Rights 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.
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 the Dignity Rights Practicum, 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 Rights Institute do?
The Dignity Rights Institute works with local and partners to protect dignity through law.
Current projects: Locally, we are working with the American Civil Liberties Union, Delaware and the Delaware Law Related Education Center (DELREC). Globally, we are working with the Human Dignity Clinic at the Jigme Singye Wangchuck School of Law in Bhutan, and the Global Campaign for the Right to a Clean, Healthy, and Sustainable Environment (winner of the 2023 UN Human Prize, among others.
The Dignity Rights 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.
Past projects and partners of the Dignity Rights Practicum include:
Business and Human Rights Resource Center
Dignity Media, Nepal
Environmental Law Institute
Lenape Indian Tribe, Delaware, U.S.
Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti/Bureau des Avocats Internationales, Boston, U.S. and Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Institute of Romani Culture in Albania (IRCA)
Jigme Singjigme Singye Wangchuck School of Law, Bhutan
Pakistan College of Law Dignity Rights Center
Pakistan Supreme Court and High Court of Lahore, Pakistan
Prisoners Legal Advocacy Network
PILnet, New York, U.S.
Refugee Legal Support – UK and Greece
SOMRAR – Human Rights in Somaliland
United Nations Environment Program
United Nations International Organization for Migration
Université de la Fondation Aristide, Haiti
About the Director
Erin Daly is Professor Emerita of Law and the author of 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
For more information, please email [email protected].