Human Dominion : Intellectual Property in Body, Persona and Art

The author examines the legal control of the sort of self-regarding actions that could be regarded as modes of self-expression. She distinguishes between the ways in which the law tends to regulate expressive aspects of ’the self’ when those expressions have commercial potential (and could thus be considered to be self-regarding actions with value to others) as opposed to when they are of a more personal nature. This conclusion leads to the identification of a contemporary ’commercial’ form of liberalism and it is suggested that this tends to dominate over the historical forms of liberalism in which many modern liberal democracies are notionally grounded.

Focussing on the jurisprudence of English-speaking liberal democracies - predominantly the United Kingdom, the USA and Australia - the author of this book examines the legal control of the kind of self-regarding actions that could be regarded as modes of self-expression. She distinguishes between the ways in which the law tends to regulate expressive aspects of ’the self’ when those expressions have commercial potential (and could thus be considered to be self-regarding actions with value to others) as opposed to when they are of a more personal nature. This conclusion leads to the identification of a contemporary ’commercial’ form of liberalism which, it will be suggested, tends to dominate over the historical forms of liberalism in which many modern liberal democracies are notionally grounded. The reasons for, and consequences of this, are then discussed.