Book Preview: Making Human Dignity Central to International Human Rights Law

“Analyzing the relationship is important because, as we all know, oftentimes law is not a medium for justice. Rather it is one that operates to repress, marginalize, and even tyrannize under the right circumstances.”

Introduction

“In a world of democracies, in a world where the great projects that have set humanity on fire are the projects of the emancipation of individuals from entrenched social division and hierarchy; in such a world individuals must never be puppets or prisoners of the societies or cultures into which they have been born.”

Roberto Unger, The Left Alternative

This October will mark the publication of the first book I ever completed, though not necessarily the first one that will make its way out. It concerns a topic that has been close to my heart ever since I was a child: the relationship between human dignity and law as a medium to secure justice. Analyzing the relationship is important because, as we all know, oftentimes law is not a medium for justice. Rather it is one that operates to repress, marginalize, and even tyrannize under the right circumstances. This is as true of international law as any other form of legality. International law has long been used to reinforce processes of neoliberalization and inequality, which I do not believe are consonant with any considered theory of justice. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that many legal scholars are highly skeptical of international law, regarding it as just one more way the powerful prey upon the weak.

Drawing on the work of figures like Roberto Unger and Martha Nussbaum, I argue that leading a dignified life is fundamentally connected to how capable we are of choosing the path we wish to take and the values we wish to live by.

My book makes the case that this needn’t be so under the right conditions. It is a critical legal argument for the role international law can and should play in securing equal human dignity for all.  Much of it is taken up with a philosophical justification for a specific approach to dignity and rights, which international law should work to secure. The remaining sections of the book concern how this project could be secured practically, especially if legal institutions and the actors directing them believed respecting human dignity fully was a worthwhile goal.