Kate Greasley (University of Oxford, Faculty of Law) has posted Using Law to Improve Sexual Morality (Forthcoming in The Morality in Law (Adams, Greasley, and Reaüme eds.) (OUP, 2025)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Leslie Green has argued that law can be an efficacious and warranted means of improving social morality, bringing it better into line with critical (i.e. ideal or correct) morality. Social sexual morality is a key site, Green says, where the law can effect positive change. This chapter further takes up the question of when and how the law can legitimately use its power to improve social sexual morality. After specifying some candidates for improvement by law, I contemplate one putatively distinct reason for the law to prescind from interfering with sexual morality beyond strict limits, that having to do with the importance of authenticity and selfexpression to the value of sexual intimacy. I argue that law is nonetheless justified in using its power to change sexual mores for the better, and that law's interference might not impede, and even enhance, sexual freedom and authenticity in certain respects. The last part of the chapter considers the use of law to improve consent communication norms in particular, through "affirmative consent" rules. It highlights some difficulties with affirmative consent laws which depart from socially prevalent norms of consent communication.