This talk will develop and defend the Extended Self as a theory of legal persons, and it will then analyze its implications for information rights. According to this account, the boundaries of individual legal persons ought not be limited to the boundaries of human bodies. After defending the extended legal person, this talk will explore its trans-substantive legal implications, with a particular focus on those for the legal institutions structuring our relationships with and rights in information (including intellectual property, privacy, law, defamation law, and more). It will argue that there are contexts in which there is no good reason to distinguish between our bodies and certain information objects when delineating the boundaries of our legal persons, nor while defining our substantive legal rights.
Mala Chatterjee is a philosopher, writer, Associate Professor at Columbia Law School, and Director of the Law & Philosophy Program at Columbia. Her work explores the philosophical questions + legal institutions surrounding information, art, expression, technology & illness, with a particular interest on the ways they construct & transform our identities, across space & over time. These include questions underlying intellectual property, technology, privacy, speech, defamation, art, and aesthetics. Prior to joining the Columbia faculty, Chatterjee received her JD and PhD in Philosophy at NYU.
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Information Society Project
YJOLT