Regulating Intimacy

A New Legal Paradigm
Erscheinungsjahr 2004
ISBN: 978-0-691-11789-8
Verlag: Princeton University Press

Buch, Englisch, 304 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 524 g

The regulation of intimate relationships has been a key battleground in the culture wars of the past three decades. In this bold and innovative book, Jean Cohen presents a new approach to regulating intimacy that promises to defuse the tensions that have long sparked conflict among legislators, jurists, activists, and scholars.Disputes have typically arisen over questions that apparently set the demands of personal autonomy, justice, and responsibility against each other. Can law stay out of the bedroom without shielding oppression and abuse? Can we protect the pursuit of personal happiness while requiring people to behave responsibly toward others? Can regulation acknowledge a variety of intimate relationships without privileging any? Must regulating intimacy involve a clash between privacy and equality? Cohen argues that these questions have been impossible to resolve because most legislators, activists, and scholars have drawn on an anachronistic conception of privacy, one founded on the idea that privacy involves secrecy and entails a sphere free from legal regulation. In response, Cohen draws on Habermas and other European thinkers to present a robust "constructivist" defense of privacy, one based on the idea that norms and rights are legally constructed.Cohen roots her arguments in debates over three particularly contentious issues: reproductive rights, sexual orientation, and sexual harassment. She shows how a new legal framework, "reflexive law," allows us to build on constructivist insights to approach these debates free from the liberal and welfarist paradigms that usually structure our legal thought. This new legal paradigm finally allows us to dissolve the tensions among autonomy, equality, and community that have beset us. A synthesis of feminist theory, political theory, constitutional jurisprudence, and cutting-edge research in the sociology of law, this powerful work will reshape not only legal and political debates, but how we think about the intimate relationships at the core of our own lives.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Cohen, Jean L.

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Regierungspolitik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Overview 5 CHAPTER ONE: Constitutional Privacy in the Domain of Intimacy: The Battle over Reproductive Rights 22 The Feminist Egalitarian Critique of Privacy Analysis 28 The Communitarian Critique 42 Privacy as Decisional Autonomy: The Isolated, Disembedded Self? 44 Privacy and Identity 49 A Constructivist Justification of the New Privacy Rights 52 The Scope of Privacy: Bringing the Body Back In 57 Excursus: On Property, Privacy, and Legal Paradigms 64 Conclusion 74 CHAPTER TWO: Is There a Duty of Privacy? Law, Sexual Orientation, and the Dilemmas of Difference 77 The Neo-Republican Revival of Privacy Discourse 78 The "New Military Policy": Privacy Protection for Gays and Lesbians? 84 The Right to Privacy and the "Epistemology of the Closet" 86 The Construction of a Stigmatized Identity: Bowers v. Hardwick 94 The Personhood Justification: Normative Paradoxes 97 The Libertarian Solution: Morally Indifferent Sex and the Harm Principle 101 Conclusion 116 CHAPTER THREE: Sexual Harassment Law: Equality vs. Expressive Freedom and Personal Privacy? 125 The Development of Sexual Harassment Law 127 The Hegemonic Feminist Sex-Desire/Subordination Model 129 Liberal Objections 132 Liberal Feminist Alternatives: Redefining the Harm 134 Postmodern Feminist Reframings: Criticizing Legal Normalization 136 Postmodern Feminist Reframings, Part 2: Redescribing the Role of Law 139 Legal Paradigms: An Explanation and a Way Out? 142 Conclusion 149 CHAPTER FOUR: The Debate over the Reflexive Paradigm 151 The Systems-Theoretical Model of Reflexive Law 153 The Action-Theoretical Approach: A Procedural Paradigm 157 A Proposed Synthesis: The Sociological Reflexivity Model 164 Responsive Law 169 Dangers of Reflexive/Procedural/Responsive Law: Arbitrariness and/or Normalization 172 Reconceptualizing the Reflexive Paradigm: A Synthetic, Pluralist Approach 175 CHAPTER FIVE: Status or Contract? Beyond the Dichotomy 180 The Traditional Status Regime Regulating Intimacy 182 Privatization of Family Law 184 The Communitarian Critique of Private Ordering: Toward a New Status Order 187 The Limits of Status 196 Conclusion 197 Notes 205 Cases Cited 261 Bibliography 263 Index 279