About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

LOG IN
LOG IN


24 W. St. U. L. Rev. 225 (1996-1997)
The Case for De-Criminializing Blackmail: A Reply to Lindgren and Campbell

handle is hein.journals/wsulr24 and id is 231 raw text is: The Case for De-Criminalizing Blackmail: A Reply to Lindgren and Campbell Walter Block* INTRODUCTION The argument for legalizing blackmail is simple and straightforward.' Blackmail consists of a threat or menace, coupled with a demand for money or other valuable consideration. The threat, however, consists of something the blackmailer has every right to do. For example, it is entirely legal to engage in malicious gossip, or write a negative movie review, expose past criminal behavior, or refuse to befriend a person.3 How, then, can it be illegal4 to threaten to do something, when to actually engage in the activity would be legal? In other words, if I can licitly write a negative review of a movie, book or play, what would justify incarcerating me for offering to refrain from doing so, for a sum of money? Alternatively, if it is lawful to jail me for threatening to write this critique unless I am paid off not to do so, how can it be properly lawful to write the critique in the first place? ** Ph.D., Economics, Columbia University, New York; B.A., Philosophy. Brooklyn College, New York. Walter Block is an Associate Professor of Economics at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. The author wishes to thank the Earhart Foundation for its generous financial support in the writing of this essay. 1. Walter Block & David Gordon. Blackmail Extortion and Free Speech: A Reply to Posner, Epstein, Nozick and Lindgren, 19 Loy. L.A. L. REV. 37 (1985); Walter Block, Trading Money for Silence, 8 U. HAW. L. REV. 57-73 (1986); MURRAY N. ROTHBARD, MAN, ECONOMY, AND STATE (1962); MURRAY N. ROTHBARD, THE ETHICS OF LIBERTY (1982); Eric Mack, In Defense of Blackmail, 41 PHIL. STUD. 274 (1982). 2. W.H.D. Winder, The Development of Blackmail, 5 MOD. L. REV. 21, 23-24 (1941); Richard Epstein, Blackmail Inc., 50 U. CHI. L. REV. 553 (1983). 3. This practice is to be sharply contrasted with extortion, which also consists of a threat, or menace, coupled with a demand for money or other valuable considerations. But here the threat consists of something the extortionist has no right at all to do: engage in murder, arson, kidnaping, rape, etc. 4. As opposed to immoral, which is a very different issue. 225