The Harm of Judging

Private justice entails consequences for those who find themselves at the receiving end of such conduct. Those consequences may be manifold and often cause harm to several juridical goods (a term borrowed from continental criminal law literature), among them privacy, reputation, property, mental health or even physical integrity and human life. In addition, new juridical goods that emerged with the information age, like cybersecurity, also come into the equation. In some cases, the law already provides mechanisms for punishing perpetrators and/or compensating victims of these actions. This chapter provides an overview of these mechanisms, with a focus on the legal frameworks governing privacy, reputation and cybersecurity. It does so initially from the perspective of international law, and subsequently from that of a selection of jurisdictions, including the EU, the UK, Hong Kong and the US. On the topic of cybersecurity, proposals for introducing an exception for hacking back (itself a form of private justice) in the US CFAA are also discussed.