Law Commons^™

Limiting Liberty To Prevent Obesity: Justifiability Of Strong Hard Paternalism In Public Health Regulation, Thaddeus Mason Pope

Faculty Scholarship

Because of the largely self-regarding nature of obesity, many current and proposed public health regulatory measures are paternalistic. That is, these measures interfere with a person’s liberty with the primary goal of improving that person’s own welfare.

Paternalistic public health measures may be effective in reducing obesity. They may even be the only sufficiently effective type of regulation. But many commentators argue that paternalistic public health measures are not politically viable enough to get enacted. After all, paternalism is repugnant in our individualistic culture. It is "wrong" for the government to limit our liberty for our own good.

In this …

Monstrous Impersonation: A Critique Of Consent-Based Justifications For Hard Paternalism, Thaddeus Mason Pope

Faculty Scholarship

Restricting a person's substantially voluntary, self-regarding conduct primarily for the sake of that person is hard paternalism. Particularly in the public health context, scholars, legislators, and judges are devoting increasing attention to discussing the conditions and circumstances under which hard paternalism is justified. One popular type of argument for the justifiability of hard paternalism takes its normative warrant from the consent of the restricted person.

In this Article, I argue that scholars and policymakers should abandon consent-based arguments for the justifiability of hard paternalism. Such arguments are torn between incoherence and lacking moral force. Very few consent-based arguments successfully resolve …

Is Public Health Paternalism Really Never Justified? A Response To Joel Feinberg, Thaddeus Mason Pope

Faculty Scholarship

n the preeminent scholarly legal treatise on paternalism, The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law: Harm to Self, Joel Feinberg argues that hard paternalism is never justified because it is superfluous; all reasonable restriction of self-regarding conduct can be justified on (more palatable) soft paternalistic grounds.

In this article, I argue that Feinberg's strategy seems to work only because he "stretches" soft paternalism to justify liberty limitation that is properly described as hard paternalism. I expose Feinberg's strained appeals, and argue for honesty and transparency regarding the bases for paternalistic liberty limitation. If the rationale for public health restrictions on …

Balancing Public Health Against Individual Liberty: The Ethics Of Smoking Regulations, Thaddeus Mason Pope

Faculty Scholarship

Ten years ago, philosopher Robert E. Goodin published "No Smoking: The Ethical Issues." Goodin argued that the liberty of smokers can be justifiably limited for two reasons: to prevent harm to third persons and to prevent harm to smokers themselves under circumstances which make their decision to smoke substantially non-autonomous. In this article Thaddeus Pope reexamines the harm principle and the soft paternalism principle in light of more recent legal developments, gives them additional content, and carefully demarcates the justificatory scope of each. Pope also defines and defends a third liberty-limiting principle, hard paternalism, arguing that the liberty of smokers …