{"id":1574,"date":"2012-07-23T19:54:40","date_gmt":"2012-07-23T23:54:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/hlpr\/?p=1574"},"modified":"2015-10-02T15:23:09","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T15:23:09","slug":"naked-restraint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/2012\/07\/23\/naked-restraint\/","title":{"rendered":"Naked Restraint"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Hudson Kingston<\/p>\n

<\/em>Freedom is a concept that many philosophers and law professors could wax eloquent on for a full career without settling on a definition. Perhaps it is true that: \u201cTruth and freedom are difficult concepts to understand. They can\u2019t be grasped by the mind.\u201d These are the words of a prisoner of conscience who spent six consecutive years behind bars in a country that refused him liberty because he clung to freedom as he saw it. The country in question is Scotland.<\/p>\n

Stephen Gough\u2019s\u00a0story<\/a>\u00a0is longer than can be summarized here, and it is somewhat hard to believe. He submitted to indefinite detention in near-solitary confinement while the people he cared about became alienated from him because he refused to put on clothing. Regardless of his righteousness or lack thereof, he has a \u201clogically coherent\u201d argument for his freedom to live as he pleases and he was willing to pay the price for it. At times his story comes off as tragic, but it is also interesting in this discussion because it proved a near-impossible question for the legal system in Scotland. The high court has determined that his nakedness is a breach of the peace earning a two year sentence on every reprise; he would not leave prison or appear in court unless he was naked \u2013 leading to further arrests; and though the system did not want to hold him, it begrudgingly followed its law.<\/p>\n

This is until\u00a0recently<\/a>\u00a0when the Scottish legal system lightened up and seemingly let Gough ramble home, naked as can be. His version of freedom apparently means liberty without condition, the ability to express himself in spite of presumed potential to offend and frighten others. His struggle seems to be a stark example of the argument, attributed to Utah Phillips:<\/p>\n

The state can\u2019t give you freedom, and the state can\u2019t take it away. You\u2019re born with it, like your eyes, like your ears. Freedom is something you assume, when you wait for someone to try to take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free.<\/p>\n

It is unlikely that Phillips was thinking of a man like Gough but one never knows.<\/p>\n

Admittedly, this was not a situation where many people would militate for his freedom of expression. No high-profile NGOs came to be his standard bearer. His solitary commitment to his ideal is part of what makes his victory so difficult to reconcile \u2013 it is not as if he shifted the populace to his side to gain his civil right. But as the Neil Forsyth, the journalist who wrote about Gough, said: \u201cIt appeared that Gough and the Scottish legal system had unwittingly created the perfect legal quandary. How to release a naked man who is in prison for being naked?\u201d The law school equivalent of the sound of one hand clapping. Perhaps someday a groundbreaking legal seminar will seek to answer this fundamental question.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Hudson Kingston Freedom is a concept that many philosophers and law professors could wax eloquent on for a full career […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZQka-po","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1574\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}