Law Commons^™

'In Hindsight Everything Is Foreseeable': Ecological Harms And The Public/Private Divide, Howard Schweber

Howard Schweber

In the classic liberal language of privacy rights, individuals’ freedom should extend as far as possible consistent with the limits of the harm principle. In Part I, this article uses an examination of cases involving states’ attempts to regulate the conduct of pregnant women to argue that the application of ecological models of causation and harm expand the harm principle to the point where it destabilizes the idea of privacy rights. In Parts II and III the article presents a brief discussion of the development of ecological models of harm in American law and the replacement of a public-private divide …