I don’t want to get off on a tangent re: the death penalty, but I brought it up just because I think it illustrates a more general difference between the US (and perhaps other common law jurisdictions) and the civil law systems of the EU.

Were I to make a case against the death penalty, I would talk about fallibility (which you mentioned), but also things like effectiveness as a deterrent, cost, bias, and other things.

And I might also mention something called the “brutalization effect,” which refers to a tendency, back when executions were public, for violent crimes to increase in the temporal wake of an execution. The idea is that the public ratification of violence as a means of righting a wrong encouraged more private acts of violence.

I think that idea of brutalization is analogous to what professor Finkin is talking about when he says that making dignity alienable creates “negative externalities.”

By contrast, policies that humanize us produce positive cultural externalities.

I didn’t talk about this in the article (it was already getting quite long), but I think the basic statement of trust implied in EU privacy law - ie I’m not going to monitor you or enforce a dress code or other intrusion upon your privacy or self-expression - basically affirms people’s maturity and responsibility.

I think one problem we have in the states is that when you allow dignity to be alienated, and you get this distinction between dominant and servile that Kant talks about, it’s infantilizing.

I think Europe does a better job sending the message to people that they’re expected to live up to the standards of responsible, moral agents.

Anyway, that was a super long response, so sorry lol. I appreciate your comments. However we may disagree, I always learn a lot from our conversations. Cheers!