Summary by Anthony Sangiuliano
On February 14, 2025, the Nathanson Centre sponsored a presentation by Haim Abraham, Lecturer at the University College London Faculty of Laws, entitled “Private Nuisance, Looking Out, Gazing In.”
The presentation was organized by Nathanson Visiting Fellow Anthony Sangiuliano as part of the Tort Law and Social Equality Project Speaker Series that he co-convenes with Sophia Moreau, Samuel Tilden Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy at New York University, and Jean Thomas, Associate Professor at the Queen’s University Faculty of Law. The Speaker Series features monthly presentations from scholars around the world who work on topics situated at the intersection of torts and social justice. It aims to foster debate and dialogue within the academic community focused on these topics and cultivate social justice tort theory as a distinctive field of inquiry.
Professor Abraham’s research interests include tort law and its relationship to broader public and transnational affairs. He is the author of Tort Liability in Warfare (Oxford University Press, 2024) as well as a co-creator of the Civilian Harms Interactive Database, which tabulates Israeli court cases in which civilians, the vast of whom are Palestinians who were injured by Israeli security forces in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, sought compensation under tort law for loss of life, bodily injury, and property damage inflicted during armed activities.
Professor Abraham’s presentation continued to explore the connection between torts and public values by examining how the law of private nuisance relates to conceptions of privacy. It addressed the question of whether looking into a neighboring property through its windows, or conducting one’s affairs in their property in a manner that is visible to neighbors, constitutes private nuisance. Professor Abraham critiques judicial decisions answering affirmatively through two prisms—a rights-based analysis and a queer theory lens—to articulate circumstances under which visual interferences ought to be considered as grounds for a private nuisance claim. He argues that merely looking out from property could not constitute a wrong, as it is a basic feature of being a free and equal individual. Furthermore, as looking out could not constitute a wrong, incidentally looking into someone else’s property also could not constitute a wrong, as otherwise a society of free and equal individuals would not be possible. No one has a right to demand that others remain hidden from sight. Likewise, no one has a right to demand that others look away when in plain view. Any other conclusion would subject some to the arbitrary whims of others, based on a division of power that is similarly arbitrary. Professor Abraham then goes on to demonstrate that in analyzing what visual interferences should be deemed ‘reasonable’ in heterogenous localities with multiple types of uses of land, courts implicitly rely on a hierarchy of types of land uses. He argues courts engage in this kind of hierarchal structuring, viewing privately owned homes as the ‘normal’ category of land uses against which all others are evaluated. Other activities are more likely to be deemed as ‘abnormal’ and will not be protected by, or from, private nuisance, resulting in a disproportionate negative impact on marginalized groups and on activities that aim at the public’s benefit.
A lively question-and-answer discussion amongst in-person and virtual attendees ensued after Professor Abraham’s presentation. Please feel free to view a recording of the event here