"Dignity is not expressly mentioned in the US Constitution or the “Canadian Charter of Rigts and Freedoms”. Nevertheless, the courts in the United States have invoked the notion in a bid to justify concrete rights and protections – such as the privilege against self-incrimination and the freedom from cruel punishment – while in Canada it has been declared that the genesis of the rights and freedoms in the Canadian Charter is “respect for the inherent dignity of persons.”. Similarly, the Constitutions of Sweden, Portugal, Spain and Greeze either describe dignity as the basis of political order or place the guarantee of dignity at the head of basic rights. The influence of dignity on rights discourse and on the development of rights-based elgal and constitutinal treatment is so pronounced that it has acquired “a resonance that leads it to be invoked widely as a legal and moral ground for protest against degrading and abusive treatment. No other ideal seems so clearly accepted as a universal social good”."