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Thaddeus M. Pope, JD, PhD, Arnold & Porter, 1900 Avenue of the Stars, 17th Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90067, 310-788-8260, Thaddeus_Pope@aporter.com
Federal, state, and municipal governments across the country are currently proposing and implementing numerous measures to combat obesity and tobacco epidemics. One type of measure aims to inform and educate individuals about the risks of unhealthy behavior, for example by requiring fast food restaurants to conspicuously disclose nutrition information. Another type of measure aims to encourage and facilitate healthy behavior, for example by building more bike paths. These types of measures are morally unproblematic because rather than constrain individual autonomy, they expand and enhance it.
But, increasingly, governments are enacting a third type of measure. Increasingly, public health authorities are proposing and implementing measures that neither empower nor encourage individuals to make healthier choices. Rather, this third type of measure coercively forces individuals to avoid unhealthy behavior, for example by banning smoking even in places where there is no harm to others.
To the extent that the individual’s restricted conduct is substantially voluntary and self-regarding, these coercive measures constitute hard paternalism. As a separate and unique liberty limiting rationale, hard paternalism has its own justificatory criteria. Recent articulations of these criteria capture most of our intuitions about hard paternalism. They are, however, deficient in several respects. I identify these deficiencies and defend some refinements.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Bioethics, Ethics
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.