Law Commons^™

Intimacy And Economic Exchange, Jill Elaine Hasday

Jill Elaine Hasday

The current legal debate about the regulation of economic exchange between intimates mistakenly assumes that the law does not countenance such exchange to any notable extent. This assumption is so widely held that it unites otherwise disparate anticommodification and pro-market scholars. Both groups agree that the law maintains a strict boundary between economic exchange and intimacy, and disagree only on whether to applaud or criticize that boundary. Both overlook or underemphasize the degree to which the law already permits economic exchange within intimate relationships.

The current debate's focus on whether the law should enforce economic exchanges between intimates misses at …