Human beings have an inherent property right in their own bodies

Evidence

Cypher asked: “All right, you are talking about it only as a photograph, and what we’re actually dealing with are photographs of an object that can’t be replicated. The object, I’m concerned about the object! Right now, for this argument, I don’t want to talk about the photographs, just about the object. Are you disagreeing that human beings have an inherent property right in their body?” — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 1265

Cypher asked: “All right, you are talking about it only as a photograph, and what we’re actually dealing with are photographs of an object that can’t be replicated. The object, I’m concerned about the object! Right now, for this argument, I don’t want to talk about the photographs, just about the object. Are you disagreeing that human beings have an inherent property right in their body?” … “All right,” the judge continued. “So with that in mind, there’s no question that this was done under circumstances, that at least in Massachusetts at the time were illegal, we don’t even have to look to today, and say, Oh, today’s different—then in Massachusetts it was not right. So why isn’t this a fruit or an instrumentality of the crime?” — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 1265

Categorization

• QUESTION: Cypher’s object/photo split — distinguishing the replicated image from the embodied person — deserves pushing on; the doctrinal distinction between body and image-as-copy is unresolved.
• DEFINE: Distinguishes the photograph as a copy from the body as the unique original object — reframing what Harvard actually holds.
• STORYSTEM: The legal idea that a person holds property rights in their own body — and that an image of the body is a derivative of that right — could seed fiction about what institutions can be forced to return.
• XREF: Connects to property-as-afterlife-of-slavery thesis and to DEEPTHINKING about who owns an enslaved person’s image. — connects to: Marriage is structured as an economic exchange where the bride’s body is purchased — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1110; Personal property is constitutive of the self, so alienating it harms the person — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 307; Corporations invoke a self-claimed right to extract data from human bodies — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 783
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots: My Fight with Harvard…, 1265