The concept of personal responsibility has been central to social, legal, and political approaches to obesity. It evokes language of blame, weakness, and vice and is a leading basis for inadequate government efforts, given the importance of environmental conditions in explaining high rates of obesity. These environmental conditions can override individual physical and psychological regulatory systems that might otherwise stand in the way of weight gain and obesity, hence undermining personal responsibility, narrowing choices, and eroding personal freedoms. Personal responsibility can be embraced as a value by placing priority on legislative and regulatory actions such as improving school nutrition, menu labeling, altering industry marketing practices, and even such controversial measures as the use of food taxes that create healthier defaults, thus supporting responsible behavior and bridging the divide between views based on individualistic versus collective responsibility.

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In this Article Professor Post argues that the common law tort of invasion of privacy safeguards social norms

If democracy is defined as the form of government dedicated to the realization of the values of selfdetermination, democracy bears a complex relationship to equality. Democracy requires equality of democratic agency, which is different from the forms of equality that flow from the values of distributive justice or fairness. Indeed, insofar as the forms of equality demanded by distributive justice are defined by reference to philosophic reason, rather than by reference to democratic self-determination, there is an intrinsic tension between democracy and distributive justice. This tension is reflected in the common conflict between rights and legislative competence. But insofar as violations of the equality required by distributive justice impair democratic legitimacy, democracy requires that these violations be rectified. Changing conceptions of distributive justice may thus fundamentally alter the preconditions of democratic legitimacy.