Overture ・ Being ・ Order ・ Choice ・ Relation ・ Field Guide
Covenantal dignity is the breath between beings—the law alive in relation.
I. Definition — Dignity as Reciprocal Being
If inherent dignity says you matter, substantive dignity tries to define how you should matter, and autonomic dignity says you get to decide—then covenantal dignity says: your worth lives in the space between you and everyone else.
This is dignity as relationship. It recognizes that you don’t hold dignity alone, sealed off from the world. Your dignity is sustained through being seen, being recognized, being in relation with others who also have dignity. And their dignity depends on the same thing—on you seeing them, recognizing them, honoring their worth.
Covenantal dignity understands that personhood is co-created. You become fully yourself through relationship, not despite it. Dignity isn’t something you possess individually—it’s what moves between people when they recognize each other as equally worthy. It’s the energy that makes equality, liberty, and care actually work instead of just being nice ideas.
Dignity stops being about you versus the state or your rights versus society’s morals or your freedom versus everyone else’s. It becomes about how we exist together in ways that honor everyone’s worth—including yours, including theirs.
II. In Covenantal Law — Dignity as the Source of Sovereignty
The Covenant builds its entire legal framework on this relational understanding. It doesn’t just protect dignity—dignity is what creates lawful power in the first place. “All lawful power arises from the inherent dignity of persons.”1
Think about what that means: sovereignty isn’t about domination. It’s about recognition. Power is only legitimate when it honors the worth that everyone already has and the moment power violates dignity, it stops being lawful—it becomes illegitimate force.
And here’s where the Covenant gets sophisticated: it makes dignity both a right and a responsibility. You have the right to dignity2 —no one can violate your worth. But you also have the duty to uphold everyone else’s dignity3, and communities have the duty to treat all persons with dignity4.
This creates a circle: your rights depend on everyone’s responsibilities, and your responsibilities protect everyone’s rights. It’s not “I have my rights and you have yours and we leave each other alone.” It’s “my dignity needs your recognition, and your dignity needs mine, and we’re all responsible for maintaining the conditions where everyone’s dignity remains real.”
Within this framework, every right becomes relational. Your privacy and autonomy5 exist alongside everyone’s duty to care and remember6. Freedom stops being independence from others and becomes reciprocity with others. Law becomes an ecology—a living system where dignity circulates, sustaining everyone.
III. Shortcomings — The Challenge of Living Law
But relational dignity has its own challenge: it requires continuous attention. And humans—individually and collectively—are really good at forgetting.
Living by mutual recognition means staying aware of others’ worth even when you’re tired, distracted, overwhelmed, or numb. It means institutions have to stay connected to the people they serve instead of becoming distant bureaucracies. It means communities have to keep recognizing each other’s dignity even when conflict, fear, or exhaustion make it easier to stop caring.
This is harder than the other forms of dignity. Inherent dignity just exists—you can forget about it and it’s still theoretically there. Substantive dignity gets enforced by the state—someone else does the work. Autonomic dignity is about your own choices—you control it. But relational dignity? That requires everyone participating, constantly, in the work of recognition.
The danger isn’t tyranny (like substantive dignity) or isolation (like pure autonomy). It’s forgetting—people going through the motions, institutions growing distant, the thread of real connection fraying until dignity becomes words on paper instead of living practice.
The Covenant knows this. It acknowledges that dignity, like any living thing, must be tended. You can’t just set up the structure and assume it’ll maintain itself because at the end of the day, relation requires work.
IV. Resolution — The Fourth Dignity Fulfilled
Covenantal dignity doesn’t replace the other three forms—it completes them by putting them in relationship with each other.
Here’s how:
It grounds inherent dignity in relationship. Yes, you matter because you exist—but that mattering becomes real through being recognized by others. Inherent dignity stops being abstract and becomes lived.
It transforms substantive dignity from control into care. Law can embody moral boundaries without the state claiming to own your soul. The boundaries protect everyone’s dignity in relation, not the government’s idea of proper living.
It weaves autonomic dignity back into community. You’re free to choose—and that freedom is strengthened, not threatened, by your connections to others who honor your choices while you honor theirs.
This fulfills what Martha Nussbaum called dignity’s “triangular struggle” between autonomy, morality, and equality — transforming tension into mutual reinforcement.7 These three keep conflicting—your freedom vs. society’s values, individual worth vs. collective good, equality vs. hierarchy.
The Covenant doesn’t erase these tensions. It holds them in relationship. Your autonomy exists within community. Moral boundaries protect dignity without controlling people. Equality gets sustained through everyone’s ongoing recognition and responsibility.
From here, dignity leaves theory and enters life.
The next part—The Field Guide to Dignity—shows how to see these patterns in the world around you, name indignity when it appears, and practice recognition as a daily act of law.
The Covenant turns the idea of dignity into living law—a constitution for all people, grounded in worth, care, and freedom.
Read it for yourself and see what lawful power can be when it serves life.
The Covenant, Part I — Core, Article 1.
The Covenant, Part I — Core, Article 2.
The Covenant, Part I — Core, Article 4.
The Covenant, Part I — Core, Article 7.
See Footnote 2.
See Footnote 3.
Martha C. Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership (Harvard Univ. Press 2006).