Prof. Erin Daly, professor of Law at Delaware Law School and the Director of The Global Network for Human Rights and the Environment addresses the GPODS fellows.
On March 15, Professor Erin Daly, the guest mentor for the GPODS fellowship, delivered a lecture on Dignity Rights and International Law. As the Director of The Global Network for Human Rights and the Environment, she offered great insights into the theme and drew from his professional experiences as well.
Prof. Daly began her lecture by tracing the evolution of dignity rights in International Law. She traced their formal adoption back to the UN Charter signed in 1945 and the establishment of the Human Rights Commission and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This was followed by similar International instruments which recognised the rights at their source whether implicitly or explicitly. While these milestones were imperative in the history of Dignity Rights, she was quick to point that these were drafted in the context of WWII and how they were not binding on the signatories but just established a norm. International laws, while important at the normative level, rarely show a trickle down effect and are difficult to enforce.
Thus, it was important for countries to adapt this at a national level. She cited various countries who have adapted dignity rights at a constitutional level. Many countries like India validated and recognised these rights in their Preambles. After talking extensively about instances of establishing Dignity Rights as a law and rule, she talked about the importance of constitutional courts in upholding and enforcing said rights. She drew examples from all over the world and identified several overaps in these cases. Primarily, most cases uphold that dignity rights are not a means to another goal but are an end in themselves. Human beings shouldn’t just be treated as an object, they are an end in themselves- anti-objectification principle. Secondly, they emphasize on how these rights are inherent and how one doesn’t have access to them due to membership to a social group or country but on account of just being human. They also talk about the equality of dignity of all humans and thus equality of dignity rights. Lastly, but most importantly, they clearly distinguish dignity rights as a legal right and not merely as a moral action. Thus dignity rights are deeper than respect and are actionable rights.
Prof. Daly highlighted other aspects such as what it means to be humans and humanity- not from a philosophical perspective but from a legal one, what humans can demand from the state and the state’s obligation to protect dignity as well the defining lines of dignity, individualism and state power. The session was highly engaging and interactive as the fellows drew from their personal experiences and raised insightful questions. The key take away from the session was the fundamental principle of dignity- every person counts.
About the GPODS fellowship:
The Global Policy, Diplomacy and Sustainability (GPODS) is a program for public policy practitioners, business professionals, energy and climate change experts, entrepreneurs, academicians, scholars and strategic analysts to act as a launchpad for their careers. Currently we have fellows from five different countries namely USA, France, UK, Israel, Italy and 40+ world leaders as mentors from 15 different countries.
About the Speaker:
Erin Daly is Professor of Law at Delaware Law School and the co-founder of the Dignity Rights Project. She served as Interim Dean and Vice Dean of the Law School in 2013–2015. Professor Daly has written extensively on the law of human dignity, comparative constitutional law, and transitional justice issues throughout the world. She is the author of Dignity Rights: Courts, Constitutions, and the Worth of the Human Person , with a Foreword by former President of the Israeli Supreme Court, Aharon Barak. This is the first book to explore the constitutional law of dignity around the world. In Dignity Rights, Professor Daly shows how dignity has come not only to define specific interests like the right to humane treatment or to earn a living wage, but also to protect the basic rights of a person to control his or her own life and to live in society with others. She argues that, through the right to dignity, courts are redefining what it means to be human in the modern world. Professor Daly serves as the executive director of Dignity Rights International and the Director of The Global Network for Human Rights and the Environment, as the US National Correspondent for the Centre international de droit comparé de l’environnement (CIDCE) at Limoges, and as the Vice President for Institutional Development at the Université de la Fondation Aristide in Haiti.