Discussion of Public Shaming Practices and Their Legal/Ethical Implications

Forthcoming (August 2011) Future Science edited by Max Brockman, Vintage Press, New York. state to publish online the names and addresses of people owing more than $20,000 in taxes. Judges in various states issue shaming punishments, such as sentencing pickpockets and robbers to carry picket signs that announce their crimes to the public. These instances of shaming might deter bad behavior, but critics like Martha Nussbaum, a political philosopher at the University of Chicago, argue that shaming by the state conflicts with the law’s obligation to protect citizens from insults to their dignity.'° What if government is not involved in the shaming? A neighborhood in Leicester, England, has a YouTube channel dedicated to neighborhood issues, including catching “litter louts.” A collection of videos shows individuals caught in various acts of littering, and if someone recognizes the litter lout, he or she can e-mail the lout’s identity to the neighborhood management board, which they pass on to City Council so that fines can be issued and the video removed. In 2008, the Santa Fe Reporter published the names and addresses of the top ten water-using households in the city (first place went to a homeowner who used twenty-one times the household average). The tennis club near my apartment in Vancouver, B.C. publishes the names of people who do not pay their dues. In each of these cases, the activity of the individual compromises the community. In none of them is the state involved in the shaming. Is this a fair use of shaming? Is it effective? Let’s deal with the latter question. Shaming might work to change behavior in these cases, but in a world of urgent, large-scale problems, changing individual behavior is insignificant. Small changes, adopted by one individual at a time, can make a difference in a problem only when the problem is small or there is lots of time to solve it (for instance, in ‘0M. Nussbaum, Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame, and the Law (Princeton. NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004). HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023725