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it ignores significant risks in favor of immediate gains that are rarely worthwhile. I may also recognize that my habit of texting is just that—a habit, a compulsion. It is usually done without reflection or deliberation. In this situation and in some others, I recognize in myself the capacity for, and indeed the propensity for, making substantively poor decisions. I know the limits on my own ability to make good decisions, perhaps because I have read the previous four chapters. I believe in my right to make my own choices, but I also recognize that I will sometimes make poor ones. I have a set of preferences about texting while driving, and my preferences differ according to whether I am driving or sitting at my desk thinking about the dangers of texting. In a sense, I have preferences about my preferences.9

What are my options? I can choose not to buy a mobile phone, or not to carry one. I can throw it in the trunk each time I drive. I can ask my wife to hold it for me. I can install software (now available) that will block my ability to text when the phone senses that it is moving at highway speeds. Like Ulysses, I can bind myself to the mast in order to resist the siren song of the iPhone.10

There is yet another option—I can vote in favor of the ban on texting. It is not inconsistent with my belief in personal-responsibility-as-choice to recognize the limits of my own ability to choose well, and to ask for help. Binding myself to the mast may include asking the law to punish me if I make a bad decision. In fact, I may recognize that the only way I will have the ability to choose well in each situation is to make a more global choice, as a voter, to ban the specific situational choices I would otherwise make.

My choices as a voter may not align with the choices I would make in any given situation. But that’s okay. To think differently as a voter than as a driver, consumer, drinker, or credit card user is not a failure of personal responsibility, even personal-responsibility-as-choice. It is simply a different way to exercise my choice.

All this is to say that an insistence on personal responsibility does not necessarily help in crafting regulatory policy. Personal responsibility does not inevitably result in a hands-off governmental stance, because people may want to have the government’s assistance in making good decisions. My way of exercising personal responsibility (of either kind) may be to call on the law to nudge me in the right direction.11

4.

Another problem with the rhetoric of personal-responsibility-as-choice is that it allows some people to avoid responsibility.

The story of Nicole Eisel is a nightmare for any parent. Nicole was a thirteen-year-old middle school student in Montgomery County, Maryland, when for some reason she became obsessed with satanism. She became fixated on death and self-destruction, and she ultimately entered into a murder-suicide pact with a similarly obsessed friend.12 Other friends heard about the pact and notified two school counselors, who met with Nicole to ask about her plans. Nicole denied the existence of any suicide pact. The counselors let the matter drop without informing other school officials or Nicole’s parents.

About a week later, Nicole and her friend consummated the pact in a local park. Her friend shot Nicole to death and then turned the gun on herself.

Who was responsible for Nicole’s death? If we take a simplistic view of personal responsibility, then the answer is simple: Nicole. She could have avoided death by not entering into the pact. We might also put her parents on the list—they are, by definition, responsible for the safety of their minor children. And let’s not forget the girl who pulled the trigger.

Was Nicole’s school also responsible? Nicole’s father thought so. He sued the school, alleging that officials failed to warn him that his daughter was a suicide risk. The school defended itself by saying that Nicole’s suicide was a “deliberate, intentional, and intervening act.”13

This is the kind of question that the law knows how to