The Strange Case of the Protective Perimeter: Liberties and Claims to Non-Interference

In this paper I describe some difficulties raised by the so-called thesis of the protective perimeter of liberties (ToPP). According to this thesis, a privilege does not necessarily involve a claim to non-interference, and a claim to non-interference does not necessarily presuppose a privilege. I argue that the first part of this thesis relies on a misunderstanding of ‘interference with a liberty’ (a misunderstanding that surfaces in the examples to which the thesis is applied) and that the second part of this thesis contains a misleading description of what is involved in having a claim to non-interference.