Public shaming is sometimes thought of as a “easier” alternative to formal punishment. Formal punishments like incarceration usually come with significant constraints, such as legitimacy requirements, due process requirements, etc. But the same does not hold for public shaming. In fact, public shaming is often a backup for enforcing social norms, stepping in when formal punishment is inappropriate for some reason. This way of doing things has led to morally worrying phenomena like online vigilantism, but has also been a tool in valuable social movements such as the Time’s Up movement.

Why is public shaming easier to justify than formal punishment? One thought is that we have various rights against inappropriate formal punishment, but we do not have a right against others’ saying what they want about us. In this paper, I provide a counterpoint to this, and argue that we may have a right against public shaming. There are two prongs to this argument. Firstly, we have reasons to think that most human beings have a right against public shaming, based on presumptively strong interests against isolation, stigmatization, and humiliation. Second, a right against public shaming fits the basic conceptual requirements of rights in general.

Thinking of a claim against public shaming as a right gives us an additional conceptual tool for sorting out the ethics of public shaming. It may help us explain the permissibility or impermissibility of various public shaming cases, as well as set clearer norms for future cases of public shaming.