A number of developments in the medical field have changed the debate about the ethics of abortion. These developments include: advances in fetal physiology, the increase in neonatal intensive care and the survival rates of premature infants. This paper discusses the idea of selective termination and the effects that these decisions have on disabled people of today. It presents a critique of th...

The idea of libertarian paternalism might seem to be an oxymoron, but it is both possible and desirable for private and public institutions to influence behavior while also respecting freedom of choice. Often people's preferences are unclear and ill-formed, and their choices will inevitably be influenced by default rules, framing effects and starting points. In these circumstances, a form of pa...

Behavioral economists increasingly argue that violations of rationality axioms provide a new rationale for paternalism—to “de-bias” individuals who exhibit errors, biases and other allegedly pathological psychological regularities associated with Tversky and Kahneman’s (1974) heuristics-and-biases program. The argument is flawed, however, in neglecting to distinguish aggregate from individual r...

Politicians and policymakers are prone to the same biases as private citizens. Even if politicians are rational, little suggests that they have altruistic interests. Such concerns lead us to be wary of proposals that rely on benign governments to implement interventionist policies that “protect us from ourselves.” We recommend paternalism that recognizes both the promise and threat of activist ...

User control is increasingly prominent in the discourse surrounding the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). However, next to user control, the GDPR also tries to achieve what will be called controller responsibility. Is this unjust paternalism or does it correctly place the responsibility for data protection with the controller and its supervisory authority? This paper argues that the qu...