ABSTRACT
Societies inflict shame on their citizens. They also provide bulwarks that protect citizens from shame. Law plays a significant role in both parts of this process. A decent society, one might think, would treat its citizens with respect for their human dignity, rather than degrading or humiliating them. A decent society would also protect its citizens from at least some types of degradation or humiliation. Shame penalties have recently attracted a great deal of interest. In part, this interest stems from a more general conservative desire to revive the blush of shame. Communitarian theorists claim that citizens today have lost inhibitions and that social disorder and decay have been the result. If Americans fear sexual degeneracy and the breakup of the family, they fear crime even more. Sex and crime, indeed, are the two focal points of contemporary panic about the subversion of core moral values.
