: Hiding from Humanity

University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher, except for reading and browsing via the World Wide Web. Users are not permitted to mount this file on any network servers. A California judge orders a man convicted of larceny to wear a shirt stating, " I am on felony probation for theft. " In Florida, convicted drunk drivers are required to display bumper stickers reading " Convicted D.U.I. " Similar stickers have been authorized in other states, including Texas and Iowa. 1 Penalties like these, involving public shaming of the offender, are becoming increasingly common as alternatives to fines and imprisonment. Jamie Bérubé was born with Down syndrome. As a result of changes enacted under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, he has an Individualized Education Plan that provides for him to be " mainstreamed " in a regular public school classroom, albeit with a monitor. The teacher and monitor work to ensure that Jamie need not live as a shamed and stigmatized person, and his condition need no longer be the object of humiliation. 2 Stephen Carr, a drifter lurking in the woods near the Appalachian Trail, saw two lesbian women making love in their campsite. He shot them, killing one and seriously wounding the other. At trial, charged with first-degree murder, he argued for mitigation to manslaughter on the grounds that his disgust at their lesbian lovemaking had produced a reaction of overwhelming disgust and revulsion that led to the crime. 3 In a 1973 opinion that still defines the law of obscenity, Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote that the obscene must be defined in a manner that includes reference to the disgust and revulsion that the works in question would inspire in " the average person, applying contemporary community standards. " To make the connection to disgust even clearer, Justice Burger added a learned footnote about the etymology of the term from Latin caenum, " filth, " and cited dictionary definitions defining obscenity in terms of disgust (as will be discussed in chapter 3). 4 Shame and disgust are prominent in the law, as they are in our daily lives. How do, and how should, they figure in law's formulation and administration? Even in this small sampling of …