Self-Ownership as Moral Standing Daniel C. Russell University of Arizona Mark LeBar Florida State University Abstract This essay is about authority or standing—not legal but moral standing, which we construe as a basic moral relation of authority between persons: the authority to obligate each other. Our thesis is that self-ownership is a form of this moral standing, one people have insofar as they are separate individuals. And unlike legal standing, self-ownership is a form of authority that laws and customs neither give nor take away. Self-ownership is therefore a basic moral relation. We distinguish this view from other conceptions of self-ownership common in the literature, and characterize the Hohfeldian structure it takes. --- Writing in 1860, Frederick Douglass said this about the “legal condition of the slave”: He is a simple article of property. He does not owe and cannot owe service. He cannot even make a contract. It is impossible for him to do so. He can no more make such a contract than a horse or an ox can make one. … [T]hey only can owe service who can receive an equivalent and make a bargain. 1 It is one thing to serve, and another to be obligated to serve. Douglass observed that a slave is a slave only inasmuch as others might legally induce his service without any arrangement whereby they obligate him to serve. Legally speaking, others may simply make him serve. Being a slave, he cannot obligate others to induce his service only by obligating him to serve. That is what it is to be a slave, to be without what we might call the authority or standing to obligate others, nor to be obligated by them. At bottom, that is the authority to obligate others to induce one’s action by obligating one to act. This essay is about that authority or standing—not legal but moral standing, a basic moral relation of authority between persons, the authority to obligate each other (§2). Our thesis 2 is that self-ownership is a form of moral standing, one people have insofar as they are separate individuals (§3). And unlike legal standing, self-ownership is a form of authority that laws and customs neither give nor take away (§4). Self-ownership is therefore a basic moral relation. Our understanding of this relation is sharply different than recent treatments of the subject, so we begin by marking that difference. Douglass 1860/1999, 386, italics added. 1 By “morality,” we shall mean interpersonal morality—the morality of interacting with each other. Cf. Scanlon 2 1997, Wallace 2019. 1