"The question at stake in general is whether the violation of bodily integrity is about physical trespass or whether it is about something else. And if it something else, is this something a matter of existential identity, political or bodily borders, or political or bodily control? Scarry, for example, begins her discussion of consent and rights with a reference to Judge Cardozo's conclusion in the 1914 case, Schloendorff v Society of New York Hospital, in which Cardozo writes that “in the case at hand the wrong complained of is not merely negligence. It is trespass. Every human being of adult years and sound mind has a right to determine what shall be done with his own body; and a surgeon who performs or operates without his patient's consent commits an assault for which he is liable in damage.” In analyzing this passage, Scarry argues that the body, in his language, is conceived of as a palpable ground: the body has edges; it has specific boundaries; to cross over these boundaries without the authorization of the person is an act of trespass. Judge Cardozo sets this in a political and philosophical framework by citing the 1905 Illinois Court of Appeals case, Pratt v. Davis, in which Justice Brown had asserted "Under a free government at least, the free citizen's first and greatest right, which underlies all others-the right to the inviolability of his person, in other words, his right to himself-is the subject of universal acquiescence.” Here, as legal commentators have noticed, the private relations (or what might have been conceived of as merely the private” relation) between physician and patient is placed within the frame of the “civil rights of citizenship”"