This chapter studies how property rights are protected and recognized in common law. In doctrine, substantive rights are not recognized expressly but indirectly. Rights are recognized via doctrines that prohibit wrongs to rights. Common law protects rights in this manner for practical reasons. Courts are better equipped to enforce duties between rights-holders and aggressors than they are to work out the full scope of rights, and when the law prohibits wrongs to rights, it leaves to people the freedom to do whatever does not violate the prohibitions. To secure rights, however, legal duties and prohibitions are structured as seems likely to secure rights. This chapter illustrates nuisance and tort suits over train sparks. Both doctrines secure to owners and occupants rights to use land. The harm, interference, and unreasonability elements of nuisance are structured to secure use rights, and sparks doctrine rules out contributory negligence to secure the same use rights. This way of thinking about rights and wrongs goes against contemporary law and economic scholarship, and this chapter contrasts law and economic studies of rights with the approach developed in this chapter.

• Psychoactive drug use can cause physical, psychological and social harm.

• Drug-related harm depends on factors related to the drug and factors related to the person taking the drug.

• Drug-related factors include the type of drug, how it is used, the amount taken and the length of use.

• Person-related factors include genetic make-up as well as mental, physical and social health.

• Drug use can be broadly classified as recreational use, harmful use or dependence.

• For some people, the risk of drug dependence results from faulty brain functioning.

• Understanding patterns of harm helps clinicians decide if treatment is needed and, if so, which treatment is most likely to help.

• Some behaviour, such as gambling, can cause brain changes similar to those seen in drug dependence.

A broad consensus has emerged in recent years that although rumours, conspiracy theories and fabricated information are far from new, in the changed structure and operating mechanisms of the public sphere today we are faced with something much more challenging than anything to date, and the massive scale of this disinformation can even pose a threat to the foundations of democracy. However, the consensus extends only to this statement, and opinions differ considerably about the causes of the increased threat of disinformation, whom to blame for it, and the most effective means to counter it. From the perspective of freedom of speech, the picture is not uniform either, and there has been much debate about the most appropriate remedies. It is commonly argued, for example, that the free speech doctrine of the United States does not allow for effective legal action against disinformation, while in Europe there is much more room for manoeuvre at the disposal of the legislator.

State responses to the recent ‘crisis’ caused by misinformation in social media have mainly aimed to impose liability on those who facilitate its dissemination. Internet companies, especially large platforms, have deployed numerous techniques, measures and instruments to address the phenomenon. However, little has been done to assess the importance of who originates disinformation and, in particular, whether some originators of misinformation are acting contrary to their preexisting obligations to the public. My view is that it would be wrong to attribute only to social media a central or exclusive role in the new disinformation crisis that impacts the information ecosystem.

The words ‘nature’ and ‘environment’ have different senses and referents. The idea of the environment is keyed to what surrounds us, and we can speak of natural and built environments as well as others. This book is concerned with ethical questions about the environment. Many of these concern problems that occur at different scales and cause harms of various types. Environmental problems can be viewed from technological, economic, religious, and aesthetic perspectives, among others. No single perspective provides the sole correct or exhaustive way of viewing environmental problems. There is an ethical dimension to most environmental problems and that is the focus of this book.

The chapter discusses the position of victims in international criminal justice and the evolution of their status and modalities of their involvement in the administration of justice by international criminal jurisdictions, with a particular focus on the legal regime of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The chapter highlights the centrality of victims as the core constituency of international criminal law and the mismatch between this aspiration and the limited recognition of their agency and rights before the UN ad hoc tribunals. It then examines how the ICC’s architects have sought to bridge this gap in the Court’s Statute and Rules of Procedure and Evidence. The ICC’s legal framework is unprecedented in this respect. Over and above the protective measures necessary on account of their engagement in the proceedings, it granted victims extensive rights to participate and be legally represented at different stages the ICC proceedings as well as the autonomous right to obtain reparations. The chapter surveys the key challenges this ambitious scheme has raised, as far as the admission of victims to participate, the organisation of their legal representation, and the implementation of reparations are concerned, and solutions that have been developed in the Court’s practice to date.

This chapter deals with all manner of state-derived prohibitions. Ancient states prohibited a broad variety of behaviours, threatening punishment for those who would transgress boundaries. The logic of prohibition was wide-ranging: from the marking of spaces, objects and officials as somehow distinct from the rest of ‘society’, leading factions within ancient states sought to preserve and protect their individual prerogatives. They also sought to reinforce their claims to leadership by incentivizing subjects to settle their disputes in state-sanctioned venues. The evidence for such prohibitions is extensive, but did they add up to something that we might legitimately call ‘social control’? Did ancient states succeed at inducing subject populations to accept their claims to rule? If so, how? This chapter suggests that the logic of prohibition was a site of contestation for both statecraft and subject-craft.

One of the most important aspects of human rights law for children is the recognition that the state has positive obligations to protect them from harm, including harm suffered in the home. Child protection is one of the most important areas for protecting children’s rights, but also one of the most difficult. As well as the right to protection from harm, children and parents also have a right to protection of their family life together. This chapter considers the extent to which the law and process of child protection protect the rights of children at risk from harm. It considers the importance of supporting families and the difficulty of deciding when to intervene. It then considers child protection proceedings and the extent to which children’s rights are protected in the law concerning child protection orders. Finally, it considers children’s own perspectives and the extent to which they are heard in the process.

Health interventions are purposeful activities intended to improve health. They may involve treatment or care of the ill, or health promotion to prevent disease and illness. Complex health interventions have multiple components interacting with each other and with the context of delivery. Evaluation is important to ensure that complex health interventions are effective in achieving their intended outcomes, represent good value for money and cause minimal harm. Evaluation is also important to detect if interventions reduce or increase health inequalities. Intervention effects are not always obvious. They can easily be confused with other changes that occur. Hence, there is a need for evaluation to use rigorous methods to distinguish the ‘signal’ of intervention effects from the ‘noise’ of other effects in the absence of intervention. Evaluation should provide evidence to inform policy. If not based on evidence, there is a risk that policies may not achieve their intended effects or may create harms.

The harm principle sets a limit on the justified legal and social control of individuals. The principle also provides a widely accepted justification for such control. This chapter critically reviews John Stuart Mill’s understanding of the harm principle and the considerations he advanced in its support. It also draws on other discussions of the principle to assess its plausibility in general. Mill took the harm principle to be the sole ground for justified interference with the liberty of individuals, but less restrictive defenses of the principle are available. The content of the harm principle, on any of its formulations, is shaped by the characterization of harm that figures in it. A good characterization of harm should be both descriptively accurate and morally appealing, but these two desiderata can pull in opposing directions. This chapter argues that the characterization of harm that figures in the harm principle must advert to the grounds that justify the principle, but these grounds are multiple and can come into conflict. Mill presents both an autonomy argument and a social learning argument in support of the harm principle, but the ground of autonomy can speak in favor of interference in cases where the social learning argument speaks against it. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of harm, speech and offense.

Proponents of the harm principle often appeal to a notion of personal sovereignty in setting out their position. This notion helps to fix the application of the harm principle. Critics of the harm principle seize on this point and argue that, once a principle of sovereignty is introduced, it can do all the work that needs doing. Appeals to harm become otiose. Further, the critics contend, the harm principle cannot explain the impermissibility of certain “harmless” wrongs, such as those involved in harmless trespass. This chapter assesses this sovereignty-centered critique of the harm principle. It argues that neither the harm principle nor the sovereignty principle enjoys priority over the other. The two principles complement each other with neither meriting a privileged position. The chapter then discusses the content and stringency of the sovereignty principle, and its relation to the Volenti Maxim, which holds that a person is not harmed or wronged by that to which they consent. The critical discussion of the Volenti Maxim, in turn, reveals limits to the sovereignty principle.