So stated, this formal scheme invites substantive completion. What is it about humans that gives them value? What distinctive human property is it that dignity picks up in purporting to ground human rights? Is it simply that humans are capable of thinking the (ascriptive) thought ‘We are the ones with value; we have dignity; or is it that they can translate this thought into a prescription demanding respect from others; or is it that they can act on such a prescription? In the Life Imprisonment case, as in much other thinking about the distinctiveness of humans, it is the capacity for autonomous action that is singled out as special. As Joseph Raz has expressed this point, ‘Respecting human dignity entails treating humans as persons capable of planning and plotting their future. Thus, respecting people’s dignity includes respecting their autonomy, their right to control their future’ (1979: 221). Raz goes on to suggest that offences to a person’s dignity, so understood, can be divided into three classes—insults, enslavement, and manipulation.