Digital Dignity: The Shibboleth of Digitalization in Europe?

Abstract

This article analyses the uses to which ‘dignity’ is put in regulating and conceptualising our digital era. It considers the example of Europe, and particularly the European Union’s uses of dignity in policy-making and regulatory innovation in the digital context. More generally, it considers the normative scope and significance of dignity as it adapts to novel challenges to agency and vulnerability, and to changing public and private spheres. It concludes that, while ambiguous, dignity offers a powerful principle for articulating present and future challenges for a digital era. Other norms may be less ambiguous or more attractive as principles around which to build a body of jurisprudence, but dignity remains a crucial discourse for connecting micro and macro concerns about regulation and lived experience, as well as for connecting concerns about autonomy and embodiment as these continue to be transformed in a digital epoch.