Introduction
It is perhaps that most profound of all questions: who am I? A question to ponder while struggling with insomnia, or to make one’s career as a professional philosopher, but it is also a question of profound importance to criminal lawyers. Until we know the nature of the self, we cannot understand what it means to harm the self; or for the self to flourish, or set out our rights and responsibilities. Criminal law is established on a particular, and contested, concept of the self, without explicitly recognising the assumption about the self being made.1
It would not be possible in a lecture of this kind to cover all the theories of the self and argue in favour of one particular conception. Rather, I will set out and explain two: the individualised self and the relational self.2 I will start with a description of the individualised self. That, admittedly somewhat caricatured image, is one that dominates the legal discourse, but I set it up to contrast and clarify the concept of the relational self.
The Individualised Self
Under the model of the individualised self, we imagine each person as a separate self, with their own interests and rights. We can identify a Jan whose interests and rights can be identified and distinguished from those of Sophie. In a legal dispute, these are often weighed up against the interests and rights of another self. In criminal cases, we identify the Robin who can be seen as an individual who can be held to account for what they have done. This holds some important points for the law. It explains why we can in criminal law hold to account the person acting now for what they did in the past: the self who acted then is the self who acted now. It can also draw a sharp distinction between the self and property: offences against the person and offences against property.
This understanding of the self is often premised on what is seen as important to people and how they flourish: their freedom; protection of their bodily integrity; and autonomy. Each self is unique, and this is seen as a strength: our interests are not subsumed but each person is valued as distinct. Martha Nussbaum explains why she believes the individual should be the basic unit for political thought:
It means, first of all, that liberalism responds sharply to the basic fact that each person has a course from birth to death that is not precisely the same as that of any other person; that each person is one and not more than one, that each feels pain in his or her own body, that the food given to A does not arrive in the stomach of B.3
This understanding of the self is reflected in the core features of Western liberalism, summarised by Fredman’s ‘five pillars’:
Rationality, particularly as the pursuit of one’s own self-interest;
Autonomy, or the right to pursue one’s own good, free from interference;
Individualism, in that individuals are prior to society;
Formal equality before the law, based on the presumption of equal rationality of all individuals;
The state as a neutral umpire, with state interference on individual autonomy requiring special justification.4
I realise that many people will feel what has just been said is obviously correct, and it is often taken without debate as truth. But that is my point: we have one particular, unspoken and assumed understanding of the self. And one which can certainly be challenged.
A Rejection of the Individual Self
There are real problems with this individualised understanding of the self. Ngaire Naffine writes:
We can think of human beings as discrete individuals, fully independent of one another and preferring it that way, because others cause worry: they pose a threat to property and personal security. Such nervous, self-isolating beings need law to keep others at bay. They do best – are most autonomous, even happy – when left to their own devices.5
She goes on to explain that such an understanding is a false caricature of human existence. Few, if any, of us can live up to this false image. The image of the isolated, self-sufficient, autonomous being cannot be related to by a parent caring for a disabled child, the victim of domestic abuse, the person living with dementia. We are all dependant on the care of others.6 This independence can only be reached by those receiving enormous privilege from society. Although presented as genderless and raceless, it is in fact a standard that can only be aspired to by the white, “able-bodied” wealthy man.7
Under the individualised model, relationships become invisible or worse, a threat to independence. They impede autonomy by making it difficult to live out one’s own vision for a life, as relationships mean our lives are intertwined with others. Emotions, which are at the heart of relationships of care, are seen to threaten rationality. The obligations of care mean we become dependent on others for help. Under the individualised model, the self needs protection from such intrusions: rights of autonomy and privacy are key. Such rights are essential for the unencumbered self-serving rational self.
That is all mistaken thinking, of course. Our relationships are central to our identity and well-being. We cannot separate our interests from those we are in caring relationships with. It does not make sense to conceive of what will promote our well-being without considering those relationships. We are beings of the emotions, as well as rationality. Far from being impediments to the self, caring relationships are core to people’s identity. Such thoughts draw people to the idea of the relational self.
The Relational Self
At the heart of the concept of the relational self is the argument that the self emerges out of our relationships with others.8 The self is constituted by and through our personal connections. As the novelist Elena Ferrante puts it, ‘It’s the people who love us or hate us – or both – who hold together the thousands of fragments we are made of.’9 By relationships here, I mean to include communal and social forces which provide the background for our relationships. Our social identities, which may involve gender, disability, race, sexual orientation, class, age, ethnicity, etc., and intersections between these identities, are part of the relational context within which we live.
We find ourselves not by gazing at our navels, but talking, touching, teaching, dancing, caring with each other. This we learnt from our beginnings. We start in pregnancy in relationship and then gain our language, understanding, identity in and through the relationships which introduce us to the world. It is then during adulthood that relationships are what give our life its value and flavour that sustain and create us. Others hold on and let go. As Suzanne Kirschner puts it:
Our identities (the labels and categories by which we are identified or identify ourselves) are ascribed, and thus our subjectivities are formed, through our immersion in particular languages, relationships, cultural symbols, social practices, and institutional trajectories.10
This relational understanding of the self finds itself in a wide range of literature from Confucian thought to African communitarian jurisprudence;11 from feminist thought12 to relational psychology.13
Of course, and this is crucial to emphasise, relationships can destroy us as well as build us up. It is precisely because our selves that created through our relationships, that abusive relationships are so harmful. Indeed, a key significance of the relational understanding of the self is that it illustrates so powerfully the particular severity of relational harming. This shows how the key role of the law must be to regulate these relationships. Under the relational model, the aim of the law is to promote caring relationships and to protect people from abusive relationships. In determining what constitutes harm, the relational model focuses on the impact on our relational beings.
Vulnerability
Closely allied to the argument that we are relational beings is the claim that humans are in their nature vulnerable. Martha Fineman has championed universal vulnerability theory. In understanding this theory, it is crucial to appreciate that it departs from the understanding of vulnerability commonly used in the law and by politicians. For them, vulnerability comes with negative connotations and is used to identify a particular group of people who are said to be in need of protection and are an object of concern. Rather, the universal vulnerability theory as Fineman argues:14
To be human is to be vulnerable…. Vulnerability constitutes the human condition; human beings are universally, consistently, and constantly vulnerable.
This understanding of the human condition, that we are constantly vulnerable and in need of the care and help of others, highlights that relationships are essential to our survival and are innately part of being human. This has significance for legal and societal intervention generally. As Susan Dodds15 argues:
Attention to vulnerability … changes citizens’ ethical relations from those of independent actors carving out realms of rights against each other and the state, to those of mutually-dependent and vulnerability-exposed beings whose capacities to develop as subjects are directly and indirectly mediated by the conditions around them.
Mackenzie, Rogers and Dodds16 have emphasised different sources of vulnerability. This can be particularly helpful for criminal lawyers. They first highlight inherent vulnerability which echoes Fineman’s idea of vulnerability being an innate part of the human condition. Second, they highlight situational vulnerability, which is “context specific”. This can be short-term and relate to a particular situation relating to the body, for example, a time of illness. Pathogenic vulnerability they see as arising for interpersonal sources. They may be an abusive relationship, a harmful sociopolitical context, and so forth.17 A criminal law seeking to deal with such humans should recognise all three of these forms of vulnerability.
Another important aspect of universal vulnerability theory, at least for some theorists, is that vulnerability is something to be embraced. We should rejoice in our vulnerability because it calls us into community with each other. It requires us to seek out cooperation with others. We must acknowledge our own weaknesses and value the caring relationship within which we live.18 As Bedford argues:
The term ‘vulnerable’, used to connote the continuous susceptibility to change in both our bodily and social well-being that all human beings experience, makes it clear that there is no position of invulnerability – no conclusive way to prevent or avoid change.
And this he identifies as a benefit of the human condition. We are changing as those around us change, and our bodies change; and that constant threat to our current status prevents us ‘getting into a rut’ or taking our being for granted. Vulnerability, then, as Gilson suggests, requires us to develop a form of ‘dynamic receptivity’.19
By focusing on vulnerability and the importance of care, this better captures our real lives, where we are motivated by care for others, rather than seeking the best for ourselves.20 It better captures the obligations on the state as not owed to a few especially vulnerable people, but to all citizens. The question then becomes the extent the state meets all of our needs and which needs it chooses not to meet. Indeed, I suggest, it signifies an important shift in perspective: rather than focusing on those who appear and unable to be self-sufficient and independent and query what is wrong with them that has led them to be in such a state, we should look at those who appear self-sufficient and independent and ask what benefits they have been given to so appear. These allocations of vulnerabilities and resilience reflect structural and general society allocation, rather than signifying a particular weakness, or vulnerability (or particular strength or ability) in an individual.
The Relational Self in Criminal Law
The potential impact of understanding the self for criminal law is profound. In the remainder of this lecture, I will highlight two particular themes. While I will be using examples from English law, they are intended to illustrate the broader themes I am seeking to address, rather than a deep discussion of English law. I will be focusing on two issues in particular. The first is the nature of harm in criminal law. We take for granted what the standard harms that criminal law needs to address are. Yet a relational understanding of the self-challenges these. The second is the role of responsibility. There is much that could be discussed here, but I will look at a particular doctrine in the law of causation to illustrate a challenge to criminal law from a relational understanding.
Core Harms
The concept of harm is core to criminal law. It plays multiple roles. One is to justify criminalisation with the well-known harm principle of JS Mill:
The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community against his will is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear … because in the opinion of others to do so would be wise or even right.21
Harm is also used to rank criminal offences, with the severity of harm being used to label offences. For example, offences against the person in English and Welsh law are often presented as a ‘ladder of harms’ with a battery (a mere touching of a person) being at the bottom, leading up through offences involving actual bodily harm and grievous bodily harm until we reach homicide at the top of the ladder. This is a clear way of presenting the law to students and feels intuitive.
However, to understand the concept of harm of the self we need to understand the nature of the self. I have argued that traditionally the law has focussed on the “soldier model of harm”. Under this model, the self is understood under the individualised model as a single person, designed for fighting and physical harm. This self is harmed when their ability to fight is impacted. Those harms are most important for the individual and most relevant to the state.
This soldier model emphasises the significance of harms to the bodies and equipment needed to fight. As Joel Feinberg puts it, harm is about “broken bones and stolen purses”.22 This reflects a particular understanding of violence, as involving a forceful impact on the body of another.
Perhaps the influential account of harms in the recent literature is that promoted by Andrew von Hirsch and Nils Jareborg who argue that the primary interests protected by the criminal law are those of “physical integrity: health, safety and the avoidance of physical pain.”23 Such an approach, reflective of the soldier model of harm, has little room for emotional or relational harms. Indeed, they specifically state that emotional harms are excluded from their analysis because they “flow from victimisation” but should not be categorised as wrongs themselves. The real wrong is the harm to the body; any emotional harm is a consequence of that.
To be fair, as we move down their scale of harms, they are willing to include freedom from humiliation and degrading treatment; privacy and autonomy. These do start to move beyond harms being tied to direct attacks on a body, but even these are tied to a particular individualistic understanding of self. In other words, harms to the person are harms that limit the individual’s freedom to act with their body as they wish. Even here, there is little room for acknowledging harms that are emotional or relational, unless they can be tied into an impact on the physical body. The standards that are focused on capabilities that are self-regarding. Relational matters are not included. In Sen’s words, ‘one’s misery at the sorrow of another … is not a reduction in … the person’s living standard’.
We might contrast how a relational understanding of the self would view harm. Nedelsky argues that the law’s fascination with bodily harm is ‘strange and simplistic’.24 She talks of a ‘voyeuristic fascination’25 with the body that fails to appreciate the people who are harmed. It reduces harm to the observable and the detached, which fails to engage with the real people, whose bodies they are. I might, add it also simplifies the legal response and finds success too easy. Law can stop the bodily intrusion and set out laws to deter it. However, relational wrongs and emotional wrongs are not so easily constrained or stopped. It also means that the legal response to wrongdoing is simplistically carried out against the body or property defendant through imprisonment or a fine, rather than dealing with them as relational selves, not just inhabited bodies.
However, if we are relational beings, then the greatest harm that can be done to us are those that destroy or misuse our relationships. It is the impact of the act on the caring relationships which uphold us which would be the most serious wrong to the self. That would include harms to the body, but the harm would be in terms of the impact of that harm on the self.
Developments in the law recognising relational and emotional harms
This suggestion of a shift in the concept of harm is one we are already beginning to see in English law in the past couple of decades. Early signs were the acknowledgement that the statutory terms “actual bodily harm” and “grievous bodily harm” could include psychological conditions, although only insofar as recognised by professional medical bodies. The House of Lords in R v Ireland.26 As their lordships explained:
The body of the victim includes all parts of his body, including his organs, his nervous system and his brain. Bodily injury therefore may include injury to any of those parts of his body responsible for his mental and other faculties.
But this is not, from my perspective, as progressive as it may sound for three reasons.
First, their Lordships were clear that the interpretation did not “include mere emotions such as fear or distress nor panic nor does it include, as such, states of mind that are not themselves evidence of some identifiable clinical condition.”27
Second, this is tied to a medical understanding of the harm. Strikingly this must be observable: it must be susceptible to an expert; a medical professional who can diagnose the condition by looking at the symptoms. We are here suspicious of the victims whose words cannot be relied upon and remain attached to the observable harm that can only be recognised by the experts.
Third, it seems that even in acknowledging psychological harm, courts are careful to keep the harm restricted to the harm to bodies and the novelty of the approach is found in including the mind within the idea of the body. In many ways, therefore, the development of the criminal law was not particularly novel; it simply took a wider understanding of what we meant by the body, and therefore bodily harm.
Since those early steps, we have seen some more radical moves. Before setting those out, I highlight three broader social and academic changes which have influenced this willingness to embrace a wider concept of harm.
Listening to female victims
The first has emerged from feminist researchers seeking to listen to victims of violence and especially female victims of male violence. On this model, the understanding of harm is found in listening to the accounts of victims, rather than seeking to define harm in an observable or in a male interpretation of harm. A good example of this approach is the offence of coercive control, to be discussed below, which was found in listening to the accounts of women who explained that the traditional approach of concentrating on the physical injuries was not capturing the true wrong of domestic abuse. That was found in the misuse of a relationship, rather than the causing of a particular harm. Subsequently, offences of stalking, strangulation, upskirting, image-based sexual abuse have all been created following feminist campaigns seeking to highlight the impact of such conduct on women, wrongs not recognised in the law at the time.
This is part of a broader point that the “soldier model of harm” may reflect the kind of injuries that are more likely to be suffered by men. As Hearn points out:
… it is men who dominate the business of violence, and who specialise in violence. And while women, as the receivers of violence, in some ways know more about the direct effects and experiences of violence than men, men remain the experts in how to do violence and in the doing of violence.28
The epistemic injustice of not seeking or hearing women’s accounts when developing the law is just starting to be addressed.
Relationalising crimes
Second, and relatedly, there is a shift in criminology; which is beginning to impact substantive criminal law, highlighting the role and significance of the victim in criminal proceedings. Traditionally, criminal law has focused on the defendant and sought to define the wrongful behaviour that he has done. Instead, we might see criminal law in relational terms. The crime is described in terms of what has happened between the people. It is about listening and acknowledging the experience of the victim and assessing the defendant’s accountability for what has happened. Criminal law is about censuring the defendant but also giving public acknowledgement of the harmful experience of the victim. As Bufacchi puts it:
The act of giving a testimony of violence, being listed to and believed, is essential for the victim of violence in the process of rebuilding her sense of self and personhood that had been destroyed by the act of violence.
One of the roles of criminal law should be to hear and vindicate the harm done to victims. This is a major project and requires considerable rethinking about criminal processes and raises many issues well beyond the scope of this lecture.
Contextualising crimes
Third, we need to acknowledge the contextual significance of crimes. We tend to see crimes as an act done by one person (the defendant) to another (the victim) and miss the social or relational context which gives those acts particular meaning of significance. For example, domestic abuse, and indeed much male violence against women, takes its force and meaning from wider social forces, replicating and echoing patriarchal messages found elsewhere in society. Hence, we find many domestic abusers seek to control women to comply with traditional understandings of women’s role being connected to child rearing and homemaking.29 The negative messages sent within society more broadly are being picked up and used by the male abuser. Indeed, in doing so, the abuser is reinforcing the negative patriarchal messages against women. As the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe’s Committee on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men puts it:
Violence against women is a question of power, of the need to dominate and control. This in turn is rooted in the organization of society, itself based on inequality between the sexes. The meaning of this violence is clear: it is an attempt to maintain the unequal relationship between men and women and to perpetuate the subordination of women.30
Catharine MacKinnon explains that: Women are sexually assaulted because they are women: not individually or at random, but on the basis of sex, because of their membership in a group defined by gender.31
Bringing the threads of this discussion together, at this point, we might see that we should, and we are indeed beginning to see the paucity of the “soldier model” of harm- where the wrong done is focused on bodily injuries and impediments to the individual’s ability to act independently. This is failing to capture the lived experience of victims of crimes of what has been done to them; the significance of the broader social context which gives those harms a particular meaning and gravity; and a recognition of the abuse of relationships as being at the heart of wrongs. A harm to another’s relational capacity robs that person of a core part of their identity. Indeed, it robs the person of any kind of autonomy and thriving for life.32 They are essential for self-respect and self-trust.
Before moving on, I should address a concern that some might have, and that is that I am downplaying the physical, that I am not taking seriously enough bodies and the impact of bodily harm. I am imagining humans as some kind of ephemeral beings without substance. I would defend myself against that charge by emphasising three points. The first is to understand better the significance of our bodies. As Jesse Wall and I have written:
it is our relationships with others that play a major role in our identity, yet those …are mediated through bodily means, be that speech, sport or sex. This can be why an individual who feels restricted/uneasy/pre-judged by their body can feel such profound unease.33
The body is important, therefore, not in and of itself, but for the tools it provides to enable recognition, interaction and engagement of others. It is the body’s role in enabling relations to flourish, which gives it value.
Second, I draw on Spillers’ distinction between ‘bodies’ and ‘flesh’:34
The notion of flesh is the blood, fluid, narrative, language, soul, and much more concentrated cultural and symbolic significances that mark the captive body… [F]lesh is the concentration of meaning about skin colour, race, sex, sexuality, gender expression–understood as excess and turned into the otherness of Black queer bodies.35
The point here is that what gives bodies their significance is the meanings attached to those bodies by us and others. Again, it is in and through relationships that our bodies become identified for, but are also categorised by, others.
Third, when thinking of the importance of bodies, we should recognise that, sometimes, as Gergen argues, “[s]omehow, pain is not pain”.36 The pain after a long run, the rub of the shoe after a night of dancing; the pleasure some find in BDSM might all highlight that what constitutes pain, or indeed a harm to body, depends very much on the context. The act of sexual intimacy itself can be exquisite joy or utter degradation, depending on the relational context.
I will now look at three particular crimes which illustrate that English criminal law is beginning to recognise relational wrongs. The first is coercive control.
Coercive Control
English law, for a long time, struggled to deal with a criminal response to domestic abuse. The case of R v Dhaliwal37 laid bare the failures of the law for all to see. A husband subjected his wife to sustained campaign of abuse, leading to her committing suicide. He was charged with her manslaughter but acquitted, a verdict which was upheld on appeal. The key problem for the prosecution was that it was necessary to show that the defendant had committed an unlawful act which had caused her to commit suicide. The difficulty was that it was not possible to identify a criminal act which had caused the suicide. The prosecution was able to prove extensive use of insults and emotional abuse, but none of them looked at individually was a criminal act; and in any event, it was not possible to identify which caused the suicide.
At the heart of the problems with the current law is its reliance on an “incident model”, which focuses on a particular act done by the defendant which causes a particular injury at a particular time. Hence, a typical change will be that on Thursday, 25th March 2025, at 1700, the defendant assaulted the victim at 1 Main Street, causing a bruise. This incident approach fails particularly in response to domestic abuse. To use it to prosecute domestic abuse cases leads to a pale imitation of the true wrong, which was a relationship of coercion and control. Indeed, it is that when abusers are asked to describe their abuse they often do fall back on the incident model, see describing it as a few occasions when he lost his temper and hit out. He fails to see the impact of the coercive relationship. The constant fear of the victim that at any time the hit may come again. The steps she takes to avoid him getting angry, the sacrifices made to keep him happy. The soldier model of criminal law captures his account of what has happened, but not hers.
Evan Stark, a leading commentator on coercive control, defines it as:
a course of calculated, malevolent conduct deployed almost exclusively by men to dominate individual women by interweaving repeated physical abuse with three equally important tactics: intimidation, isolation and control.38
The importance of this is that it captures the experience of domestic abuse. As Psychologist Mary Ann Dutton explains:
Abusive behaviour does not occur as a series of discrete events. Although a set of discrete abusive incidents can typically be identified within an abusive relationship, an understanding of the dynamic of power and control within an intimate relationship goes beyond these discrete incidents. To negate the impact of the time period between discrete episodes of serious violence--a time period during which the woman may never know when the next incident will occur, and may continue to live with on-going psychological abuse - is to fail to recognize what some battered woman experience as a continuing ‘state of siege.’39
The coercive control model also captures the fact that the abuser will be relying on a range of tactics to achieve his goal. These may range from emotional abuse to economic abuse, spiritual abuse to psychological abuse. It may involve a threat or the use of violence. Which of these will be used may depend on the particular vulnerability of the victim. Their gravity is found in their impact on the victim, not the nature of the tool used.
Gaslighting plays an important part in much coercive control. This has been defined as ‘a form of persistent manipulation and brainwashing that causes the victim to doubt herself or himself, and ultimately lose her or his own sense of perception, identity, and self-worth’.40 Abusers commonly seek to persuade the victim that any abuse was just a “joke” or that the victim is blowing things out of proportion. Jealousy is simply an expression of how much they love the victim. They can draw on wider stereotypes that patriarchy promotes about women: that they are overly emotional and irrational. The traditional soldier model of criminal law is likely to exacerbate this gaslighting. By presenting the abuse as an incident of violence, it is easy to reduce it to a moment when the defendant lost his temper, or was responding to stress, rather than recognising the reality for the victim.
A core element of coercive control is rendering the victim dependent upon the abuser by limiting access to external sources of help or independence. Part of generating dependence is to cause the victim to devalue herself. If the abuser can persuade the victim that she is useless and that he is the only person who would like or support her, this will discourage any attempts to find affection or help outside the relationship. The wrongs of domestic abuse are, therefore, not so much to the physical body but to the self. It causes the individual to lose trust in themselves, to hate who they are and blame themselves for bad things that happen to them. The victim of coercive control becomes a tool for the affirmation of the defendant, often needed as a result of their own insecurities about their masculine identity.
An intimate relationship involves the disclosure of parts of ourselves (both physical and emotional) that we wish to keep free from others. The kind of openness necessary for intimacy is so extensive that there are particularly strong bonds of trust. Within our intimate relationships we can be truly ourselves, free of pretence. Through them, we can explore and discover ourselves. Domestic abuse strikes at the very conception of the self for the victim.
As it is through our relationships we form our identities as to who we are and try and make sense of the world, domestic abuse turns what should be a tool for self-affirmation and self-identification into a tool for alienation and self-betrayal. The victim almost becomes used as a tool against herself.
The harm done by an abusive intimate relationship goes particularly deep. It is through our intimate relationships that we form our identity and sense of self. This is why domestic abuse is particularly harmful and creates harm which is not found in other crimes of violence. Intimate relationships typically involve not only trust but also commitment. The individuals invest more in the relationship and commit resources, making the losses that would arise from ending the relationship higher.
There is no doubt that capturing this in the law creates a challenge. An attempt can be found in the offence of coercive control that was created in England and Wales in section 76 Serious Crime Act 2015, the key elements of which are:
A person (A) commits an offence if—
A repeatedly or continuously engages in behaviour towards anotherperson (B) that is controlling or coercive,
at the time of the behaviour, A and B are personally connected,
the behaviour has a serious effect on B, and
A knows or ought to know that the behaviour will have a serious effecton B.
There is much in the detail of this offence which could be unpacked, and I will not draw that out here. But there, I suggest, to admire. There is a clear attempt to move away from the “incident model” and capture the nature of the relationship. There is a move away from focusing on bodily harms and recognising the serious effect on the victim’s life.
However, there are concerns too. I highlight three. First, the harm still focuses on the behaviour of the defendant, rather than the impact on the victim. In the Guidance “coercive behaviour” means an act or a pattern of acts of assault, threats, humiliation and intimidation or other abuse that is used to harm, punish, or frighten the victim; and “controlling behaviour” means an act or pattern of acts designed to make a person subordinate and/or dependent by isolating them from sources of support, exploiting their resources and capacities for personal gain, depriving them of the means needed for independence, resistance and escape and regulating their everyday behaviour.” The focus is on the intent of the defendant rather than the impact on the victim. Here I confess to being torn. On the one hand, we might want to put the experience of the victim centre stage: did the victim feel humiliated and intimidated, and so forth, rather than what was the intent of the defendant. On the other the focus on the victim can have undesirable results in trials, as we know well from rape trials. Where the victim is constantly challenged as to whether they did indeed experience these things, and why they therefore appeared to be acting in a loving way. Particularly bearing in mind that victims of domestic abuse are constantly seeking to avoid escalating the abuse, and that may appear loving. There is plenty of scope for defence barristers to exploit a jury’s understanding of the nature of coercive control.
Second, it has proved enormously difficult to operate in practice. The kind of evidence which might demonstrate coercive control can involve hundreds of thousands of incidents to prove. The time needed to gather, prepare and present this evidence could be overwhelming. Many courts go back to focusing on a few key incidents to establish the coercive control, although there is a concern that this seen falls back to the incident model. Occasionally, judges have been willing to identify particular incidents as evidence of the nature of the relationship. In one family law case, the fact that the victim sent a text asking the abuser for permission to go to the toilet was taken as speaking volumes about the nature of their relationship.
Third, a challenge is that the current definition fails to capture the wider context of the abuse. There is no space to discuss this here, but I have addressed it elsewhere. Feminist commentators have long argued that domestic abuse sustains or perpetuates patriarchy and thus creates a very particular kind of wrong. As the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women puts it domestic violence “is not an isolated incident targeting vulnerable women but a systematically used tool of patriarchal control to ensure that ‘women stay in their place.’”41 It is in, through and with patriarchy that domestic abuse is able to thrive.
Image based sexual abuse
My second example is image-based sexual abuse. The average adult spent 3 hours and 41 minutes online in 2023. For those whose work relies on computers, it has been claimed that UK adults are online for 76% of their waking hours. It is not surprising that our presence online is an important aspect of a person’s identity. People spend a considerable amount of time in creating, establishing and maintaining their online persona.
This is important in the understanding of the self. Earlier, I noted the point that our bodies are the source of our interaction with others and the way we are recognised and interacted with by others. That primacy given to the body in that role is now under challenge. It is clear that who we are online is core aspect of how we develop relationships and interact with others.
This opens up, however, a major gap in the protection of the self. The online self receives relatively little protection, and many legal systems are struggling to keep up. Take the example of image-based sexual abuse. Quite clearly, this cannot be understood in terms of a traditional sexual assault: there is no touching, indeed, there may well be no interaction between the defendant and the victim. Yet it is abundantly clear that image-based sexual abuse is a serious wrong to the online self. A victim can lose control of how others interact with them and engage with them online.42 Others have access to their image and online personality and can use that as they wish. Just as rape can be seen as the misuse of another’s body, IBSA is the misuse of the online self. It treats what should be the victim’s to use in what way they want to present to the world and others. As there is no control over who uses the images or the context within which they are presented, there is a complete loss of control over the use of the selves by others.
As Goudsmit Samaritter43 explains:
A non-consensual depiction and/or publication of an image takes control over a person’s visibility, and thus over how a person relates to others (this is why their ‘reputation’ matters to people). Especially with an issue as closely tied to the core of our identity as sexuality is, this tends to result in a severe infringement of the victim’s identity.
Strangulation
A third example is strangulation. For a long time in English law this would be charged as a battery. Only if it could be shown that the strangulation left lasting injuries, such as bruises could the offence be raised to actual bodily harm, for example. However, it is clear that this fails to capture the true nature of the wrong. Again, the starting point was listening to the accounts of women and their relational context.
That listening process showed that non-consensual strangulation is primarily used within the context of male violence against women and is a feature of domestic abuse and sexual assault. The act is commonly used in these settings because it is an ultimate sign of power. Quite literally, the defendant has the victim’s life in his hands. Catherine White et al found that 36.6 per cent of individuals reporting a strangulation as part of a sexual assault stated that whilst being strangled they thought they were going to die.44 The defendant in a case of strangulation has the decision whether the victim lives or dies by deciding whether to loosen their grip. It is not surprising that strangulation is prominently portrayed in pornography: it echoes the themes in much pornography of the viewer having the powerful gaze over the other.
Strangulation is a highly gendered activity. There is clear evidence that in cases where the strangulation has required medical help, the vast majority of such cases involve women. In a survey of those attending a clinic for non-fatal strangulation, 96.6% of those attending the clinic after NFS were female, and in 98% of cases, the perpetrator was male.45 So, this is very much a male behaviour done to women.
As a result Parliament has created a specific offence of strangulation in 70(1) Domestic
Abuse Act 2021:
A person (“A”) commits an offence if—
A intentionally strangles another person (“B”), or
A does any other act to B that—
affects B’s ability to breathe, and
constitutes battery of B.
It is a defence to an offence under this section for A to show that B consented to the strangulation or other act.
But subsection (2) does not apply if—
B suffers serious harm as a result of the strangulation or other act, and
A either—
intended to cause B serious harm, or
was reckless as to whether B would suffer serious harm.
This offence does not go as far as some would like. Consent is still available as a defence to strangulation, even though generally behaviour which causes actual bodily harm or a more serious harm is unlawful, even if consented to. There is here, however, legal recognition of the particular nature of the wrong.
Causation and Responsibility
I turn now to a slightly different aspect of the relational self. This concerns the law on causation. In particular, I wish to discuss in terms of causation, to what extent a defendant is responsible for the criminal law for the actions of others? This is a key question in the law in criminal law and is governed in English Law by the doctrine of novus actus interveniens. The seminar decision in English law is the decision of the House of Lords in R v Kennedy.46 However, as I will demonstrate, subsequent decisions have raised some problems with the approach taken there.
The facts of R v Kennedy47 are sadly all too common. The victim, Bosque, asked Kennedy for drugs. Kennedy provided him with heroin and left the room. The victim took the drugs and died. The question was whether or not Kennedy could be said to have caused the victim’s death. The Court of Appeal said he could on the basis that the taking of the drugs and death were reasonably foreseeable. However, that was overruled by the Supreme Court. The issue raised by the case was resolved by the application of the rule of novus actus interveniens. Where a victim or third party acted in a way which was informed and voluntary, then that could break the chain of causation. In this case, Bosque was aware that the substance was heroin and he had chosen to take the drugs. Bosque, and Bosque alone, was responsible for his own death.
In the following passage, they explained the principle:
The criminal law generally assumes the existence of free will. The law recognises certain exceptions, in the case of the young, those who for any reason are not fully responsible for their actions, and the vulnerable, and it acknowledges situations of duress and necessity, as also of deception and mistake. But, generally speaking, informed adults of sound mind are treated as autonomous beings able to make their own decisions how they will act, and none of the exceptions is relied on as possibly applicable in this case.48
This has become known as the “autonomy principle”. Their lordships, drawing on academic writing, emphasised that generally when a victim or third party decides to engage in an activity, they are responsible for their decision and cannot blame others for it. Only where a person is acting as a result of very serious pressure, a threat of death or serious harm, for example, that a person can be said to be acting involuntarily and the person who made the threat become liable. Here, while Bosque faced the urges of drug addiction, these were not sufficient to mean him no longer responsible for his decisions, meaning Kennedy could not be blamed for what Bosque did with the drugs.
It seems fair to say that the academic response to Kennedy was largely positive. Jo Miles49 welcomed “the concise, unanimous decision” which “restores black letter orthodoxy”. David Hughes welcomed “the reinstatement of good legal principles”50 provided by the decision.
However, subsequent decisions suggest that the autonomy principle is not as straightforward in its application as may be thought.
Wallace
In Wallace51 the defendant threw sulphuric acid at the victim, Mark van Dongen, her former boyfriend. He was left with serious injuries including complete paralysis, visual impairment, disfigurement and unbearable constant pain. He went to Belgium and, when informed that his condition was permanent, sought euthanasia, which was permitted under Belgian law. Euthanasia was performed by doctors. The defendant was charged with murder, and the primary issue was whether or not the defendant could be said to have caused the death. One might have expected following Kennedy the focus would be on the extent to which the decisions of the victim (or indeed the doctors) were free and informed. However, the court instead focused on whether the victim’s act was a significant and operating cause of death.
The sidelining of the question of whether the victim or the doctors were acting in a “free voluntary and informed” way in requesting suicide was not particularly helpful on the facts of the case. A reasonable case could be made for answering that question either yes or no for both the victim and the doctors. This is because the concepts of voluntariness and informed consent are scalar. All our decisions are impacted by others, and the extent to which we are exercising free will is the subject of significant philosophical debate.52 So, in a sense, the questions do not mean very much. Perhaps it would be more accurate to rephrase them as saying were the acts of Mr van Dongen were sufficiently free or voluntary to mean responsibility for them rested with him, rather than the defendant. But that seems to lead to a completely circular argument: you cause a result if you ought to be held responsible for it. Perhaps for this reason, the Court of Appeal did not particularly dwell on the words free, voluntary, and informed; indeed, those terms do not appear at all in the model direction of the jury provided at the end of the judgement. Rather, the discussion53 is more in terms of the connection between the injuries caused by the defendant and the death. Particular weight was placed on the fact that Mr van Dongen had not previously had any suicidal tendencies before the attack. It was, rather, explained that the decision Mr van Dougan reached “resulted from the injuries the defendant had inflicted.”54 The Court went on to say that “The intervening acts of Mr van Dongen and the doctors were not, on these facts, random extraneous events, or acts unconnected with the fault element of the defendant’s conduct. They were very closely, indeed inextricably, bound up with it.”55 The defendant, in other words, was heavily involved in the decision of the victim. As they put it, “If the question is then asked whether, on a common sense view, the defendant’s conduct merely set the stage for Mr van Dongen’s death, or was instrumental in bringing it about, we consider the jury could properly answer that question in the prosecution’s favour.”56 Notably, this approach does not focus on the victim’s autonomy (the freedom, voluntariness or informed nature of their decision). Rather, the focus is on the extent to which the defendant is responsible for putting the victim in the circumstances in which they made the decision they did. The extent to which the decision is an autonomous is just one aspect of that bigger question. In other words, there is more going on here than simply determining the extent to which the victim was autonomous. Here, the point is not so much the freedom of the choice of the victim, but rather the fact that the defendant had put the victim in a position where they made a choice they would not otherwise have made.
The significance of this refocussing is all the more apparent in relation to the discussion in Wallace of whether the doctors broke the chain of causation. Here, the free, voluntary, and informed act test seems particularly odd. It seems highly unlikely that the doctors were not acting autonomously in deciding to perform euthanasia. They were experienced medical professionals, acting in a non-emergency situation, seeking to comply with Belgian law. As the Court of Appeal makes clear the focus of the court is on the responsibility of the defendant for the outcome, not the autonomy of the doctors. The court emphasised57 that the doctors were acting lawfully. That point seemed to be given far more weight than whether they were acting in a free, voluntary, and informed manner. The real basis of the decision in Pagett, and this aspect of Wallace, was that the police/doctors should not be said to have caused the death when they were acting in the performance of their legal duty. Rather, the defendant should be responsible for producing the circumstances in which these professionals had to perform their legal or professional duty. Whether the police/doctors were acting in an autonomous way is not really relevant. Or, indeed, if anything, it is the fact they were acting autonomously in line with their legal duty which strengthened the case for saying there was no breach of the chain of causation.
Field
In Field,58 the accused (Field) had “pretended to be in a genuine and caring relationship with the deceased” (Farquhar).59 The accused was much younger than Farquhar and had been seeking to manipulate him (and another victim) to gain financially, including getting Farquhar to leave him a substantial portion of his estate in his will. Farquhar was gay and struggled to reconcile this with his Christian beliefs. The accused, to quote the court “appreciated and ruthlessly exploited [Faruhar’s] vulnerability.”60 He “gaslighted” Farquhar, as the court put it, with the aim of inheriting his estate on his death. One night, Field gave Farquhar Dalmane (a prescribed drug for insomnia) and alcohol (a bottle of 60% proof whisky), which Farquhar took, leading to his death. The key issue on appeal was whether or not the defendant had caused victim’s death.
This case has many resemblances to Kennedy,61 and so, again, we might have expected that the focus would be on whether Farquhar was acting in a free, voluntary and informed way. Indeed, the key argument of the defence was precisely that: that the victim had chosen to take the sleeping tablets and alcohol in a free, voluntary and informed way, and so the defendant did not cause his death. Indeed, given the clear evidence that the victim understood precisely the nature of the substances he was taking and was not compelled to take them, it might be thought the prosecution would have considerable difficulty in succeeding. Nevertheless, succeed they did.
The “undisclosed murderous intention of the appellant”62 substantially changed the nature of the drinking enterprise. “PF would not have had an informed appreciation of the truly perilous nature of what was occurring.”63 This enabled the court to distinguish Field from Kennedy, as in the latter case, there were no reassurances about rescue from the defendant, which meant the victim was not “informed”.
With respect, this somewhat stretches the argument. Farquhar was informed about the nature of the activity: he knew he was drinking alcohol and knew that excessive drinking had risks of serious injury or death. The fact that the defendant wanted him dead seems irrelevant to an understanding of the nature of the act. The fact that the defendant would not rescue him if he collapsed, might makes the activity slightly more risky than otherwise, it does not change its nature.
A second strand of argument relied on by the court is, with respect, far more persuasive. This is that the defendant “manipulated and encouraged PF into a position of grave danger…. [PF was] unwittingly lured into a perilous drunken and drugged position by someone who feigned to be his loving partner.”64 Here, the emphasis is not so much on the victim’s state of mind or whether he could be said to be acting autonomously or not. Rather, the defendant had engineered a situation which led the victim to act in a way he might not otherwise have acted. The defendant exploited the victim’s vulnerabilities. This puts the focus on the actions of the defendant and the defendant’s responsibilities to the victim, rather than on the victim’s state of mind and the extent to which they are acting autonomously. Indeed,65 it is striking that in the Court of Appeal judgement, much more is made of the fact that the defendant had deceived the victim about the nature of the act in the context of an exploitative relationship than the precise level of the victim’s understanding of the riskiness of what they were doing. We see then a side-lining of the relevance of the free voluntary and informed question and an emphasis on the responsibility of the defendant for what the victim was doing.
Rebelo
In R v Rebelo,66 the defendant ran an online business selling a chemical, Dinitrophenol (‘DNP’), which was claimed to promote weight loss. Eloise Parry, a 21-year-old student, purchased some DNP capsules from the defendant and tragically died after taking eight capsules. DNP is not licensed as a medicinal drug, but there was evidence of its dangerous effects, including death. Eloise Parry was said to have a troubled past, including having depression and personality disorders, although she had obtained first-class honours in her first year exams. The court noted that a consultant psychiatrist identified her as being “very vulnerable”.67
However, it was concluded that the victim was not acting in a voluntary way. Particular weight was attached to her ‘vulnerability’ and the fact that she had told friends she could not control her use of DNP.
So, at first sight, it seems the reasoning in this case is fully consistent with Kennedy with a focus on the “free voluntary and informed act” test and the principle of autonomy. However, again we see an emphasis on the responsibility of the defendant. The court emphasised in the judgement that the defendant knew of the dangers of DNP and that he was seeking to disguise his business activities. The Court of Appeal in Rebelo (1) approved of a direction asking the jury to focus on whether the victims’ act eclipsed the defendant’s negligent duty of care. That, it might be implied from their general discussion, would be particularly relevant in a case where the defendant had sought to exploit the vulnerability of a victim by (in this case) seeking out on the internet young people with particular troubles with body image.
Wider issues
The cases since Kennedy have highlighted two particular problems with the “free voluntary and informed” act test, being used to promote the autonomy principle. First, the courts have found the concepts of the act being “free voluntary and informed” too vague to be useful and not capturing all the factors that need to be taken into account. In particular, they offer little help in cases where the act was legally justified, such as the action of the doctors in Wallace. Second, the courts have sought to acknowledge cases in which even though the victim may have acted in a free, voluntary and informed way, they have sought out and exploited the vulnerabilities of the victim, as occurred in Field and Rebelo.
The problem with the autonomy principle developed by the House of Lords in Kennedy is its highly individualistic nature. It is based on an image that people are “billiard balls in suits”:68 self-contained atomistic entities which are marked by self-sufficiency, independence and autonomy. The criminal law has long struggled to recognise this and feels much more comfortable with a “male” norm. It struggles, therefore, to capture “communal wrongs”. Corporations’ pollutions and misogynistic environments may be hard to explain in terms of individual responsibility, even if they are undoubtedly harms. Writing in connection with corporate responsibility, Susanne Beck69 writes:
Most socially important – and dangerous – decisions are not reached by individuals but by collectives; the way modern societies change depends on which kind of corporations acquire social power, their internal regulations and values, and the way they are integrated into existing regulative structures. And, while the power of collectives has expanded, the power of individuals has decreased. Individuals are members of different collectives, their behavior regulated by divergent normative systems, and their intentions assimilated by collective goals.
The current law fails to recognise the way that in fact we are deeply relational, with our autonomy and well-being found in the mixing of our identities and autonomies.70 Our actions all profoundly impact on each other; our decisions rarely, if ever reflect an isolated decision-making process, but are made in a communal and relational context. In this sense our decisions are not simply “ours”.71 As Norrie asks:
Legal categories presuppose an individual subject in whom responsibility is fixed by mental characteristics relating to the cognitive control of actions. These characteristics establish what seems to be a discrete, fixed, stable individual subject, but what if subjects are not like that? What if identity … [is] located in significant measure beyond the individual in the social realm, and [is] therefore fluid and changing?72
Further, our decisions are rarely, if ever, “free, voluntary and informed”. Rather, as Sarah Conly writes, our decisions are rarely the result of informed decision making, rather:
As has by now been discussed convincingly and exhaustively (notably by Nobel Prizewinning Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky), we suffer from common, apparently ineradicable tendencies to ‘cognitive bias,’ which means that in many common situations, our decision-making goes askew. These biases are many and varied, but they have in common that they interfere with our appreciation of even quite simple facts, and lead us to choose ineffective means to our ends.73
This discussion highlights the error in the autonomy principle at the heart of the Kennedy principle. We always act, or nearly always, act through, with and in relation to others. Our acts are given meaning by the response of others, and in order to evoke responses in others. This means that the separation between what I do and what I contribute causally in, through and with others breaks down. The argument that we are only responsible for our own actions is false. Further, the assumption that we ever act in a free, voluntary and informed way is misguided.
Of course, there are naturally fears that once we start to recognise the mutuality in responsibilities for each other’s actions, the whole basis of criminal law breaks down. I think this need not be so. If we start with a recognition that we owe each other responsibilities, and this includes that we do not inappropriately exploit or pressure others into doing so in a way which causes them serious harm, then we have a helpful way to proceed. I think this gives us a much clearer framework to deal with these cases, than simply saying “each person is responsible for their decision”.
We can therefore develop ideas around “relational liability” where the focus of the criminal law becomes our responsibilities to others created by our relations. We always act, or nearly always, act through, with and in relation to others. Our acts are given meaning by the response of others, and in order to evoke responses in others. This means that the separation between what I do and what I contribute causally in, through and with others breaks down.74
Conclusion
This lecture has explored the impact on criminal law of adopting a relational understanding of the self. It has highlighted how traditionally the law has focused on attacks on the victim’s body or property: the soldier model I have described. I have challenged that perspective by emphasising that this does not acknowledge the experience of victims who do not under wrongs in these terms. A relational understanding of the self-better captures the reality of our lives and opens up new ways of understanding harms that have gone unrecognised understandings of harm. In particular, it recognises that the misuse of relationships and behaviour that undermines self-worth and other capabilities that are key for the formation of relationships are fundamental wrongs.
I have suggested that we are beginning to see legal systems open up to these new ideas of relational wrongs. I have used the example in English law of offences of coercive control, image-based sexual abuse, and strangulation as examples of where the law has moved beyond the soldier model of harm to better capture these relational wrongs. Other examples could have been used, such as stalking, spiritual abuse, or upskirting. All of these are recognition of the importance of relationships to our wellbeing and the importance of these not being used against us. As so much violence against women involves devaluing women’s experiences and undermining the validity of their accounts, it is ever more important to ensure that the criminal law seeks to listen to and validate the wrong suffered.
I have also challenged the place of autonomy in the law of causation, particularly looking at cases involving the doctrine of novus actus interveniens, when it is claimed the victim has broken the chain of causation. Instead, I have argued that our understanding of our vulnerable, relational selves creates obligations to take care of each other and not to exploit each other’s vulnerability and argued against using autonomy to disguise that.
The criminal law needs to rethink the concept of the self on which it is based. We are not essentially soldiers. We are vulnerable, interdependent, finite beings. It is our relationships which give our lives meaning and create our identity; that hold us together; that give our lives value. However, those relationships can also be used to tear us apart, rob us of a sense of self-worth. That requires the criminal to protect us from that and to recognise the wrong that occurs when that happens. Then we can have confidence to enter those relationships which make us who we are; give our life its meaning; and enable us to rejoice together in our vulnerable humanity.
*
Notes
[1] This lecture builds on some ideas initially presented in Jonathan Herring, Law and the Relational Self (Cambridge University Press, 2019) and Jonathan Herring, “Relational and Emotional Wrongs: Departing from the soldier model of harm in the criminal law” (2024) 8 Catolica Law Review 59–78.
[2] Eric T Olson, “Personal Identity”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2024 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2024/entries/identity-personal/>.
[5] Ngaire Naffine, ‘The Liberal Legal Individual Accused: The Relational Case’ (2014) 29 Canadian Journal of Law and Society 123.
[7] Ellie Anderson, Cynthia Willett, and Diana Meyers, “Feminist Perspectives on the Self”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2025 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2025/entries/feminism-self/>.
[8] Andrew Fagan, “The Subject of Human Rights: From the Unencumbered Self to the Relational Self” (2024) 42 Nordic Journal of Human Rights 215 <https://doi.org/10.1080/18918131.2024.2339012>.
[10] Lewis A Kirshner, “The Concept of the Self in Psychoanalytic Theory and Its Philosophical Foundations” (1991) 39 Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 157 <https://doi.org/10.1177/000306519103900108>.
[11] Kwame Gyekye, Tradition and Modernity (1997) <https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195112252.001.0001>.
[12] Jonathan Herring, Law and the Relational Self (2019) <https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108348171>.
[13] Kenneth J Gergen, Relational Being: Beyond Self and Community (Oxford University Press, USA 2011).
[14] Martha Albertson Fineman, “Reasoning from the Body: Universal Vulnerability and Social Justice” [2022] SSRN Electronic Journal <https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4100709>.
[15] Susan Dodds, “Depending on Care: Recognition of Vulnerability and the Social Contribution of Care Provision” (2007) 21 Bioethics 500 <https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8519.2007.00595.x>.
[16] Catriona Mackenzie, Vulnerability: New Essays in Ethics and Feminist Philosophy (Oxford University Press, USA 2014).
[17] Anna Grear, “Embracing vulnerability: Notes towards human rights for a more-than-human world.” (2020) Bedford, Daniel and Herring, Jonathan, eds. Embracing Vulnerability: The Challenges and Implications for Law, London: Routledge, pp. 153–174.
[18] Daniel Bedford, “Introduction: vulnerability refigured” (2020) Bedford, Daniel and Herring, Jonathan, eds. Embracing Vulnerability: The Challenges and Implications for Law, London: Routledge, pp. 153–174.
[19] Errin Gilson, The Ethics of Vulnerability: A Feminist Analysis of Social Life and Practice (Routledge, 2013).
[20] Catriona Mackenzie, “Vulnerability, needs and moral obligation.” (2017) In C. Straehle (Ed.), Vulnerability, autonomy and applied ethics (pp. 83–100). (Routledge Research in Applied Ethics; No. 1). Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group.
[23] Andrew von Hirsch, Nils Jareborg, “Gauging criminal harm: a living-standard analysis” in Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, vol 11, No. 1 (Spring, 1991), pp. 1–38.
[25] Nedelsky, 191. Jennifer Nedelsky, “Law, Boundaries, and the Bounded Self” in Representations, vol 30 (1990), pp. 162–18, 169.
[28] Vittorio Bufacchi, “Knowing Violence: Testimony, Trust and Truth” (2006) n° 235 Revue Internationale De Philosophie 277 <https://doi.org/10.3917/rip.235.0277>.
[30] Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe’s Committee on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men, Domestic Violence (Council of Europe, 2002).
[31] Catharine A MacKinnon, “Reflections on Sex Equality under Law” (1991) 100 The Yale Law Journal 1281 <https://doi.org/10.2307/796693>.
[32] Miller SC, “Toward a Relational Theory of Harm: On the Ethical Implications of Childhood Psychological Abuse” (2022) 18 Journal of Global Ethics 15 <https://doi.org/10.1080/17449626.2022.2053562>.
[33] Jonathan Herring and Jesse Wall, “The Nature and Significance of the Right to Bodily Integrity” (2017) 76 The Cambridge Law Journal 566 <https://doi.org/10.1017/s0008197317000605>.
[34] Hortense J. Spillers, ‘Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book’ (1987) 17 Johns Hopkins UP 64.
[38] Evan Stark, Coercive Control (2023) <https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197639986.001.0001>.
[39] Mary Ann Dutton, “Understanding Women’s Response to Domestic Violence” (2003) 21 Hofstra LR 1191, 1204.
[40] Preston Ni, “How Gaslighters Emotionally Manipulate, Traumatize, and Exploit Victims.” Psychology Today (April 30, 2017) <https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/communication-success/201704/7-stages-gaslighting-in-relationship>.
[41] Yakin Ertürk, “Violence against Women: From Victimization to Empowerment” Paper presented at the ESCAP forum ‘Where’s the Power in Women’s Empowerment?’ Bangkok, Thailand, 4 August 2008, cited in United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Its Causes and Consequences (UN SRVAW). (2009). 15 years of the UN Special Rapporteur on VAW, Its Causes and Consequences (1994–2009): A critical review. www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Women/SRWomen/Pages/Publications.aspx.
[42] Clare McGlynn, Erika Rackley, “Image-Based Sexual Abuse” (2017) Oxford Journal of Legal Studies; Clare McGlynn and others, “‘It’s Torture for the Soul’: The Harms of Image-Based Sexual Abuse” (2020) 30 Social & Legal Studies 541 <https://doi.org/10.1177/0964663920947791>.
[43] Marthe Goudsmit Samaritter, “What Makes a Sex Crime? A Fair Label for Image-based Sexual Abuse” (2021). 2 BJU Strafblad 67, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3934550.
[44] Catherine White and others, “‘I Thought He Was Going to Kill Me’: Analysis of 204 Case Files of Adults Reporting Non-Fatal Strangulation as Part of a Sexual Assault over a 3 Year Period” (2021) 79 Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine 102128 <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jflm.2021.102128>.
[50] David Hughes, “Drug administration: the reinstatement of causation principles” (2008) 72 Journal of Criminal Law 353.
[66] R. v Rebelo (Bernard), [2021] 4 W.L.R. 52 (2021); R v Rebelo [2021] EWCA Crim 306, Court of Appeal.
[68] Charles Foster and Jonathan Herring, “What Is Health?,” Oxford University Press eBooks (2014) <https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199688999.003.0003>.
[69] Susanne Beck, “Corporate Criminal Responsibility” in Markus Dubber and Tatjana Hörnle (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Criminal Law (Oxford University Press, 2011), 335.
[71] See for further discussion, Jonathan Herring, Law through the Life Course (2021) <https://doi.org/10.46692/9781529204674>.
[72] Alan Norrie, “Punishment, Responsibility, and Justice: A relational critique” (2020) Oxford University Press.
[73] Sarah Conly, Against Autonomy (2012) <https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781139176101>.
Competing Interests
The author has no competing interests to declare.