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20 Loy. L. A. L. Rev. 35 (1986-1987)
In Defense of Keeping Blackmail a Crime: Responding to Block and Gordon

handle is hein.journals/lla20 and id is 59 raw text is: IN DEFENSE OF KEEPING BLACKMAIL A CRIME: RESPONDING TO BLOCK AND GORDON James Lindgren* In a recent issue of this journal, Walter Block and David Gordon argued that some kinds of common blackmail or extortion threats should no longer be criminal.1 They would legalize threats that could be legally carried out. If you could do something, they say, you ought to be able to threaten to do it. So, for example, they would allow me to make the following threats: I will expose that you had an extramarital affair, beat your spouse or had an abortion unless you pay me $1000 a month for the rest of your life. If I could legally expose the damaging information (and I could), they think I ought to be able to threaten to expose it unless paid off. They would simply wipe out this large class of blackmail-threats to take legal acts. Elsewhere in the literature, this problem is called the paradox of blackmail.2 To reach their strange conclusion, Block and Gordon attack the work of several scholars-Robert Nozick, Richard Posner, Richard Ep- stein and myself. Of course, I am pleased when anyone takes my work seriously enough to say it is wrong. And I am particularly pleased to be in such illustrious company. I am writing here to advance two positions, one in defense of all four of us,3 one in defense of myself alone. * Visiting Professor of Law, University of Virginia, 1985-87; Professor of Law, Univer- sity of Connecticut. B.A. 1974, Yale University; J.D. 1977, University of Chicago. The author wishes to dedicate this article to Randy Block. 1. Block & Gordon, Blackmail, Extortion and Free Speech: A Reply to Posner, Epstein, Nozick and Lindgren, 19 Loy. L.A.L. Rav. 37 (1985). 2. See generally Lindgren, Unraveling the Paradox of Blackmail, 84 COLUM. L. REV. 670 (1984); Murphy, Blackmail: A Preliminary Inquiry, 63 MONIsT 156, 156-57 (1980); Williams, Blackmail, 1954 CRIM. L. Rlv. 79, 163. 3. Although I am speaking here in defense of Nozick, Posner and Epstein, I am not speaking on their behalf. The arguments are my own, and I suspect that Nozick and Posner, in particular, think differently than I do about the role of morality in law. See infra notes 7-15 and accompanying text. My own critiques of their theories (as well as other theories of black- mail) are set out in Lindgren, supra note 2.

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