Abstract

Typically, we think of republicans and liberals as being suspicious of paternalistic law. But in this paper, I argue that enactment of paternalistic law is actually demanded by republican and liberal values, and that enacting certain paternalistic laws is one way that the republican or liberal state performs its core function. As I explain it, this core function is to create and to maintain conditions of right-conditions of freedom, non-domination, justice, etc.-among persons capable of making legitimate second-personal claims on one another. I argue, though, that individual persons are capable of making legitimate second-personal claims on themselves, in precisely the way that calls for state intervention. In other words, I argue that paternalistic law is demanded by considerations of right.