On the International Legal Aspects of Human Dignity
Human dignity is a value of great antiquity. Dignity for the classical Roman conveyed the sense of the rank of some citizens of Roman society. Later, in the period of the Renaissance, religious writings expanded the idea of human dignity to a quality enjoyed by all, not simply an elite. The Renaissance fortified the conception of the individual's capacity, through God, to transform themselves. 
 
The second great renaissance in the life of human dignity occurred at the end of World War II. The appalling loss of civilian life during this conflict and the gruesome revelations of the treatment of minorities, most notably the evil treatment of European Jews, revived discussion of human dignity. Human dignity may have waxed and waned in legal and philosophical attention after this time. In the 1970s, one writer suggested that discussion of human dignity 'seems to have suffered the fate of notions such as virtue and honour, by simply fading into the past'. However, human dignity has enjoyed yet another renaissance over the past decades, in debates about dying with dignity and the human cloning debates of the modem Genome Era.
Normative Versus Taxonomic Humanity: Varieties of Human Dignity in the Western Tradition
Today we see human dignity and human rights as inextricably linked. As the International Human Rights Covenants put it, “these rights derive from the inherent dignity of the human person.” This article highlights the recent and radical nature of this connection by offering an episodic overview of the history of (human) dignity in the Western tradition. It is now widely accepted that the idea of human rights—equal and inalienable rights held by every human being that can be exercised against the state and society—first appeared in the modern Western world. I argue that much the same is true of human dignity, understood as an inherent, morally defining feature of homo sapiens that demands social respect. For nearly all of Western history, dignity and humanity functioned as particularistic principles of hierarchy rather than universal principles of equality. I also argue that rather than human dignity providing a prior moral foundation for human rights, ideas and practices of human rights and human dignity mutually constructed each other as the class of “taxonomic humans” (members of the species homo sapiens) gradually came to be seen as co-extensive with those “normative humans” that had an inherent dignity that demands social recognition and respect.
The Politics of Liberty in England and Revolutionary America: Acknowledgments
Introduction: re-examining the roots of Anglo-American political thought Part I. The Divine Right Challenge to Natural Liberty: 1. The attack on the Catholic natural law 2. Calvinism and parliamentary resistance theory 3. The problem of Grotius and Hobbes Part II. The Whig Politics of Liberty in England: 4. James Tyrrell: the voice of moderate Whiggism 5. The Pufendorfian movement: moderate Whig sovereignty theory 6. Algernon Sidney and the old Republicanisms 7. A new Republican England 8. Natural rights in Locke's two treatises 9. Lockean liberal constitutionalism 10. The glorious revolution and the catonic response Part III. The Whig Legacy in America: 12. British constitutionalism and the challenge of empire 13. Thomas Jefferson and the radical theory of empire 14. Tom Paine and popular sovereignty 15. Revolutionary constitutionalism: laboratories of radical Whiggism Conclusions Notes Bibliography.