PT135.S3.P3.Q18 > Analytics

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The following passages are adapted from articles recently published in North American law review journals.

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Question · Why is blackmail illegal under Canadian and US law?

Blackmail combines two acts that are each legal alone -- threatning to expose info, and seeking money from another. Why is it illegal to combine these actions?

Consequences of lack of answer · No clear line between legal and illegal blackmail

Blackmail statutes are broad and cover conduct that most people would think should be legal.

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Answer to question · Illegal because of triangular structure

Blackmailer uses leverage that's dependent on a third party (the government). This misuses a third party for the blackmailer's own benefit.

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Blackmail in Roman law · No special category for blackmail

Roman law evaluated actions based on harm, not based on the legality or illegality of the action itself.

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Assumption about blackmail · Blackmail presumed harmful if it revealed hurt victim's reputation

Party who threatened blackmail had burden to prove good reason for revealing the info.

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Relevance of truth · Truth of a revealed fact not enough to make blackmail legal

True revelation was legal only if there was a legitimate purpose in revealing the info and the government had an interest in having the info revealed.

Passage Style

18.

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Question Type

Application

Split Approach: After passage A, eliminate any acts that that would be illegal under Canadian and U.S. law, leaving only those acts that would definitely not be illegal. Then, after passage B, choose the remaining answer that would be illegal under Roman law.

Sequential Approach: The main area where these two legal systems disagree about legality is how they view the act of revealing damaging information about someone. The Canadian and U.S. system says that doing so is not illegal, whereas the Roman system says it’s illegal unless the information was revealed for a legitimate purpose (not just to hurt or extort someone) and public authorities had an interest in seeing that information revealed.

bribing tax officials ██ █████ ██ █████ ██████ █████

The passages don’t discuss the legality of bribery.

revealing to public ███████████ ████ █ ████████████ ████████ ███████ ███ █████████ █████ ████ ███ ██████████ ██████

This wouldn’t be illegal under Canadian and U.S. law due to free speech protections. But it wouldn’t necessarily be illegal under Roman law either, since it involves information that public authorities would have an interest in having revealed. (Public authorities would probably want to know that a state official is embezzling government funds.)

testifying in court ██ █ ███████████ █████████ █████ ███████ ████ ███ █████████ ██ ██████

The passages don’t discuss the legality of lying while testifying.

informing a government ███ ██████ ████ █████ █████████ ████ █████████ █████ ████ ██████

revealing to the ██████ ████ █ █████████ ██████████ ███ ████ ███ ██ ██████████ ██████

This wouldn’t be illegal under Canadian and U.S. law due to free speech protections. And it likely would be illegal under Roman law, since there’s no clear reason to think that this is being done with good intentions or that public authorities have an interest in having this revealed.

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