Date: Tue, 8 May 2007 13:09

From: Andrew Dickinson

Subject: OBG Ltd

Jason's bodily integrity (as his privacy or reputation) is a fact, but a (legal) "right to" bodily integrity is something quite different. It is a legal construct and, in my view, tells us nothing interesting about the scope of protection which the law affords to individuals by means of the law of obligations. Thus, the law of negligence does not offer protection for certain instances of negligently caused personal injury, just as it does offer protection in certain limited circumstances for economic loss resulting from personal injury or damage to property of third persons. "Rights" here are simply correlative to "obligations", but the content of both is a reflection of the protection which the legal system is willing to provide by means of judicial determination. In my example, one might say that the indirect claimant has a "right" to integrity of his relationship with the person deceived, just as the person deceived has a "right" not to be misled, but I not think that either construct is useful. Rather, we should be asking, who deserves to be protected by the civil law from lies told by others, and one cannot escape the conclusion that the line to be drawn is one of policy.

Andrew

-----Original Message-----
From: BEEVER A.D.
Sent: 08 May 2007 12:38
Subject: RE: ODG: RE: OBG Ltd.

If you negligently cause personal injury to Jason, why is he able to sue you but I am not? Isn’t plausible to say that the reason is because it is Jason’s (right to) bodily integrity you violate and not mine? Isn’t this a natural thing to say, and not at all artificial? Wouldn’t it actually be odd if at least an answer of this kind was on the wrong track?

Perhaps the disagreement arises in part because we have different things in mind when we speak of “rights” here? I.e. I don’t think that Jason or I think of rights as “artificial constructions”, though, of course, they are normative, not physical, as is true of everything about law.

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