Abstract
This essay was originally presented at the Rutgers Institute for Law and Philosophy as part of the Symposium on The Evolution of Criminal Law Theory. It is a Reply to Professor Donald Drippsâ politically-based justification for blackmailâs prohibition. Under Drippsâ account, by exacting payment from the victim blackmail is an impermissible form of private punishment that usurps the stateâs public monopoly on law enforcement. This essay demonstrates that Drippsâ account is either under-inclusive or over-inclusive or both. Drippsâ account is applied to a number of the standard blackmail scenarios by which theories of blackmail are typically assessed. Drippsâ account is under-inclusive by failing to treat as blackmail Victim-Welcomed Blackmail, Non-Monetary Blackmail, Rebuffed Blackmail, and Non-Informational Blackmail which the law considers as blackmail. And it is over-inclusive by treating as blackmail Victim-Initiated Exchange and Unconditional Disclosure which the law does not recognize as blackmail.