Sarah Conly's "The Limits of Liberty"

Sarah Conly is Professor Emerita of Philosophy at Bowdoin College. She is the author of Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism and One Child: Do We Have a Right to More?

Conly applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, The Limits of Liberty, and shared the following:

The Page 99 Test is not entirely successful in presenting the core of my book's argument. That argument is that liberties that do great harm to others should be limited. On page 99 of my new book, The Limits of Liberty, I discuss the need to reduce our population numbers if we are to reduce the degree of climate change that we have brought upon ourselves. It shows how increased greenhouse gas emissions are, not surprisingly, causally linked to our increased population numbers, even more than to our consumption. "Of course, we should reduce consumption as well—but the chances of our reducing consumption to the level of the poorest countries is nil. ...And unfortunately, that is what it would take for population growth to have a negligible effect on emissions."

This is important to my discussion, but does not include my conclusion as to the best public policy in light of these facts about population. In the section that includes page 99, I argue that if we do not reduce our numbers voluntarily, it would be appropriate for government to take steps to discourage having more children than is sustainable. That is, in times like these we should not have the liberty to have just as many children as we might like to have. Of course, we may reduce our numbers without any government intervention, and that is certainly to be preferred. If we fail to do so, however, the government can justifiably take steps to disincentivize having too many children.

This chapter of the book discusses the liberties we should give up have because they contribute to environmental destruction. In another chapter I discuss issues in medical ethics where, again, certain liberties may justifiably be restricted. For example, I argue that if a contagious disease is dangerous enough and a vaccination is harmless, we can be forced to get a vaccination—in such a case we don't have the right to bodily autonomy.

In a third chapter I discuss what I call the Ethics of Personal Expression. Here I argue that in two areas where we tend to hold liberties dear we need to consider that in some cases we have gone overboard, specifically in some cases of speech and in the case of religious accomodation. For example, I argue that people should be legally liable for false factual claims that they make on public internet venues, if those prove to be dangerous, Claims such as "Barack Obama is not a citizen," which are demonstrably false and potentially dangerous, should be subject to civil and possibly criminal repercussions. Religious accomodation is the legal tradition where we make exceptions to laws for those who feel their religous practice requires violating that law. This allows, among other things, the Catholic church to practice sex discrimination in hiriing that would not be allowed to, for example, a law firm. I argue that the liberty to flout a just law for reasons of personal religious faith is a liberty we should not have. Since we do not allow religious exceptions to laws against murder, allowing them to laws against sex discrimination suggests we don't really think that sex discrimination is bad. While we should not engage in religious persecution, we should similarly not engage in religious favoritism when it comes to law.

When personal liberties allow great and unjustified harm to others, they should be limited.

Learn more about The Limits of Liberty at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Against Autonomy.

Writers Read: Sarah Conly (December 2012).

--Marshal Zeringue