What does it take to trespass on a person’s body?

Journal article

Abstract:: In this article, I begin to develop an account of bodily trespass – a specification of the conditions under which one person infringes another’s right against bodily interference. I first offer a minimal account, intended to capture only the clear cases of bodily trespass. On this account, bodily trespass consists in either bodily touching or significant, non-psychologically-mediated bodily alteration. I then consider whether this account should be broadened to accommodate some plausible, though non-obvious, cases of bodily trespass. These are cases in which a bodily alteration is produced via psychological processes in the target. I argue that, in deciding whether to accommodate such cases within our account, we face a dilemma, and one of considerable practical significance.

Files:: Douglas_2025_What_does_it.pdf

(Preview, Accepted manuscript, pdf, 214.5KB, Terms of use)

Language:: English
Keywords:: bodily integrity

resistibility

bodily trespass

reasons-sensitivity

bodily interference
Pubs id:: 2100665
Local pid:: pubs:2100665
Deposit date:: 2025-03-27

Copyright holder:: Thomas Douglas
Rights statement:: © The Author(s) 2025. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Trust. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Notes:: This is the accepted manuscript version of the article. The final version is forthcoming from Oxford University Press at https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/analys/anaf019

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