Can, Do, and Should Legal Entities Have Dignity?: The Case of the State

Maxwell O. Chibundu

Dignity is said to inhere in the idea of being human. It might then be assumed that the inverse is impossible; that is, that non-human legal persons are incapable of possessing dignity. However satisfying that might be, at least one influential member of the United States Supreme Court, in his recent opinions, has suggested otherwise. Justice Kennedy has relied on the concept of dignity not only to affirm the transcendent value of according equal protection and due process rights to homosexuals, but he also has invoked the concept of dignity to explain why states may not be subjected to certain kinds of lawsuits. Many of those reading this Paper who instinctively will applaud Justice Kennedy’s gay rights decisions will just as likely sneer at, if not find offensive, his clothing of the protections afforded corporate interests—including the state—in the garb of “dignity.” For such critics, it is indisputably the case that legal entities, unlike natural persons, have no right to rely on claims of “dignity” to underpin whatever assertions of rights they may make. Indeed, for many, the ideas of “rights” and of “corporate interests” are antithetical. But beyond the emotive belief in the exclusive attachment of dignity to human beings, what arguments exist for the claim that dignity is or should lie exclusively in the individual human person? Reflecting on this question is the undertaking of this Paper.