Private Authority in Ripstein’s Private Wrongs

Abstract

Since Arthur Ripstein’s Private Wrongs1 is so brimming with ideas, and its author so famously penetrating in his analyses, you will not be surprised to learn that there is much in the book with which I agree, and rather less with which I disagree. Nevertheless a few aspects of Ripstein’s intellectual infrastructure strike me as incompletely explained in the book, and I offer this comment mainly in a spirit of curiosity, that is, in the hope of extracting some further explanation. I will be particularly concerned with what is said and presupposed on pages 33–34 of the book, and more particularly in footnote 3 on page 34. This is the point in the book at which Ripstein introduces his pivotal thought that “authority-violations”2 are central to private law, and in particular that tort law’s special concern with our bodies and our property can best be understood as a concern to protect a certain special zone or sphere of authority that is reserved to each of us. Ripstein once spoke of this as a zone of “sovereignty”3 but this terminology, which always struck me as somewhat inflationary, is no longer used in Private Wrongs. Nevertheless the switch to talk of “authority” does tend to keep alive a certain set of pressing questions that talk of “sovereignty” already raised.