Martha Nussbaum

speaker

170 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Oct 2009 last heard Oct 2009

Martha Nussbaum’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

No recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

Elucidations · Episode 4: Martha Nussbaum discusses sexuality and the law · 1 Oct 2009 podcast

So it's the equality issue here.

And that's what's being fought about is the the idea of equal dignity.

Well privacy is a notoriously slippery and uh multi valent concept.

Uh Judy Thompson long ago wrote an article saying that it's a hopelessly confused concept and I think she's not far wrong.

First of all, it has an informational aspect, the private is the secret, it has a spatial aspect like the private place, the home, and then it has a decisional aspect.

The private means what's your own to decide.

And in American legal history, especially the second and third, the spatial and the decisional, have gotten very, very confused.

So when we talk about a constitutional right to privacy,

What really is centrally meant is that certain kinds of decisions, such as decisions about childbearing, contraception, and so on.

are a person's own to make and cannot be interfered with by anyone else.

But in the way that the decisions have been worked out, the spatial weaves through it in a way that's very confusing.

So we find that these decisions are protected, well, maybe it's because they're in the home or in the privacy of the marital bedroom.

And one case actually did hold that you can legally use pornography in your home

but not necessarily any place else.

Now, what I argue is that the really relevant issue for legal regulation is Mill's contrast between the self regarding act

and the non self regarding act.

What's relevant is the impact it has on others who don't consent.

So if something is either harmful or extremely offensive to others who is thrust in their face in a way that they don't consent, then we can at least entertain the possibility of legal regulation.

But if the act is performed in seclusion or in some other way fails to have anyone there who's non consenting, let's say it's a sex club where you have to pay to be admitted, you have to choose to go there, then

Then it seems to be just as self-regarding as the act that's performed in the marital bedroom.

Showing 141–160 of 170 · page 8 of 9