Blackmail, Privacy, and Freedom of Contract

Abstract

By "blackmail," I mean the attempt to trade silence for money.The term is sometimes used in law as the equivalent of extortion, which is the extraction of money by threats generally, of which threats to reveal incriminating or embarrassing information are a subset.Shavell's article in this Symposium analyzes threats in general as well as blackmail; I discuss other threats too, but only in passing.The descriptive literature on blackmail is sparse.The best work is probably MIKE HEPwORTH, BLACKMAIL: PUBLIcITY AND SECRECY IN EVERYDAY LIFE (1975), but it is limited to British law.For philosophical discussions of blackmail that are partially parallel to the economic analysis of this Article, see JOEL FEINBERG,