 In trying to clarify who or what we are obligated to respect, we are naturally led to a question about the ground or basis of respect: What is it about persons that makes them matter morally in such a way as to make them worthy of respect? One common way of answer this question is to look for some morally valuable natural qualities or capacities that are common to all beings that are noncontroversially owed respect (for example, all normal adult humans). Even regarding humans, there is a question of scope: Are all humans owed respect? If respect is something to which all human beings have an equal claim, then, it has been argued, the basis has to be something that all humans possess equally or in virtue of which humans are naturally equal, or a threshold quality that all humans possess, with variations above the threshold ignored. Some philosophers have argued that certain capacities fit the bill; others argue that there is no quality actually possessed by all humans that could be a plausible ground for a moral obligation of equal respect. Some draw from this the conclusion that respect is owed not to all but only to some human beings, for example, only morally good persons (Dean 2014). Another view is that the search for valuable qualities possessed by all humans that could ground universally owed moral recognition respect gets things backwards: rather than being grounded in some fact about humans, respect confers moral standing and worth on them (Sensen 2017; Bird forthcoming). But the last view still leaves the questions: why should this morally powerful standing and worth be conferred on humans? And is it conferred on all humans? Yet another question of scope is: Must persons always be respected? One view is that individuals forfeit their claim to respect by, for example, committing heinous crimes of disrespect against other persons, such as murder in the course of terrorism or genocide. Another view is that there are no circumstances under which it is morally justifiable to not respect a person, and that even torturers and child-rapists, though they may deserve the most severe condemnation and punishment and may have forfeited their rights to freedom and perhaps to life, still remain persons to whom we have obligations of respect, since the grounds of respect are independent of moral merit or demerit (Hill 2000b).