Self-Regarding Acts (Part IV): Voluntary Intoxication and Legal Paternalism

📝 Editorial Note:

This article forms part of a nine-part academic series titled “Jural Relationships in the System of Reciprocal Duties.” The series examines the philosophical foundations of rights and duties through the concepts of autonomy, reciprocity, and legal relationships. This instalment focuses on self-regarding acts, analysing the limits of legal intervention through the example of voluntary intoxication and drawing on the theories of John Stuart Mill and Immanuel Kant.

🔗 Index:

1. Duties Towards Oneself in the System of Reciprocal Duties

2. Non-conflictual jural relationships

   1. The Absence of a Factual Conflict of Rights

   2. Case 1: Right to Exclude

   3. Case 2: Voluntary intoxication (Self-Regarding Acts)

   4. Conflictual jural relationships

3. From Self-Regarding Acts to the Model of Spheres

   1. Case 6: The use of motorcycle helmets (Indirect Effect)

   2. Case 7: Vertical Limit

4. Case 9: The Merchant of Venice (Self-Regarding Contracts)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y708HRpb1po

In his personal life, Alvin engages in alcohol consumption, which temporarily hinders his ability to perform tasks requiring rapid decision-making and physical agility. We will assume that his actions do not harm other individuals. Beto is worried about Alvin. He wonders if he can legally intervene and force him to change his habits. All participants are competent adults, fully informed, capable of acting rationally, and free from undue pressure.

Self-regarding acts refer to conduct that is carried out and only has effects within the sphere of privacy reserved for the individual. In Mill's words, it is the “sphere of action [...] comprehending all that portion of a person’s life and conduct which affects only himself, or if it also affects others, only with their free, voluntary, and undeceived consent and participation.” 

In this scenario, the individual's prima facie duties to himself are in opposition to the prima facie social no-duty towards others. While Alvin's behavior may have constituted a violation of duty to himself, its control lies solely with his own conscience. And, since it does not affect Beto's interests, Beto has a prima facie no-right to prevent or hinder Alvin from becoming intoxicated. Alvin has a prima facie social no-duty to refrain. The will of the active subject is opposed to a social no-duty.

Alvin's prima facie right of defense derives from the determination of his own ends. From Beto's point of view, his concern for Alvin's well-being stems from his duty of beneficence, which is opposed to Alvin's right to self-defense and the social duty of noninterference. For Kant, the paternalistic beneficence of forcing another to be happy according to one's own concepts of happiness would be contrary to the legal duty to respect their freedom to make themselves happy according to their own choice. As a result, all other things being equal, the individual right of Alvin is correlated with the social duty of Beto to not interfere. It can be concluded that society lacks the authority to impose prohibitions or obligations on conduct related to oneself. 

Duties toward oneself are not enforced by external coercion, nor do they correspond to the rights of others. They are based only on “free self-constraint”. The ability or power to free oneself from duties towards oneself is available to the obligated subject. In these cases, the individual has a social non-duty to refrain from pursuing his own ends. According to Kant, external legislation is only possible for duties of law (officia iuris), while in the case of duties of virtue (officia virtutis s. ethica), such legislation is not possible. Mill distinguishes between the external relations of the individual, in which one is responsible to those whose interests are concerned or to society, and self-regarding acts, in which the conscience of the agent himself must take the place of the judge in a case that cannot be submitted to the judgment of his fellow men.

In this instance, the relationship is analogous to that outlined in the section on the absence of a factual conflict of rights. The distinction lies in the fact that, in the absence of a factual conflict of rights, the act affects the freedom of others. The passive subject's no-right derives from their own self-regulation. Whereas in self-regarding acts, the no-right of all is the result of the active subject's conduct not significantly affecting other individual, social, or public interests.

This article is based on:

Espinoza Rausseo, A., & Rivas Alberti, J. (2026). Duties Towards Oneself and Self-Regarding Actions in the System of Reciprocal Duties. Mexican Law Review, 18(2), e20548. https://doi.org/10.22201/iij.24485306e.2026.2.20548