Harm to Self

Abstract

The Moral Limits of Criminal Law is a four-volume work that answers the question: what kinds of conduct may a legislature make criminal without infringing the moral autonomy of individual citizens? Volume three, Harm to Self, tackles the riddles associated with the commonly proposed principle called legal paternalism. It evaluates (and rejects) the principle that it can be right to impose coercion on a person for his own good, whatever his own wishes in the matter. Chapters in this section discuss the concept of personal autonomy (or sovereignty), voluntariness, and assumption of risk, as well as failures of consent because of duress, fraud, and other factors incompatible with voluntary behaviour.

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