This short NYer piece on the Letterman thing brought up an aspect of blackmail I’ve never considered before. James Lindgren, a law professor at Northwestern, is …
… the author of a paper called “Unraveling the Paradox of Blackmail,” which raises the question: why is blackmail considered a crime? The thinking goes like this: It’s perfectly legal for Halderman to write, or threaten to write, a screenplay (or an e-mail to TMZ) exposing the fact that David Letterman had flings with “Late Show” employees. It’s also legal for Halderman to ask Letterman for money as part of a business transaction. So why are the two things illegal when you put them together? In other words, Lindgren said, “Why is it illegal to threaten to do what you can do legally anyway?”
Most folks in the piece seem to think it should be illegal. Except the libertarian (of course).
