ABSTRACT
Our ability – and willingness – to respond to the claims of a moral order is reflected in all our actions – in everyday relations, whether intimate, social, public. Much legal debate is concerned to delineate appropriate spheres of legal influence. With justification this has meant that activities considered innately ‘private’ should be relatively unfettered by law indeed, an overweening interference in the minutiae of daily life poses a severe threat to human flourishing whatever model of society we subscribe to. But the traditional assumption that ‘private’ or ‘personal’ morality and ‘public’ morality are easily separable is deceptive. Traditional conceptions of the separation have tended to serve masculine views of appropriate boundaries. It is right that not just feminist jurisprudence, but all jurisprudence should continue to question the credibility of these boundaries. For, as we have seen in the hypotheticals of fiction and in the narratives of fact, in jurisprudence and caselaw, in the judge and judged, the moral agent undergoes construction in the tension between his or her public and private ‘selves’.
