Professor Chloë Kennedy

The book, published by Cambridge University Press, is part of her research project ‘Identity Deception: A Critical History’ which was funded by an Arts and Humanities Research Council Research Leader fellowship.

The book examines how the law deals with deception in the context of sex and intimate relationships, tracing the development of various civil and criminal laws related to this issue over the past 250 years.

It argues that the law’s understanding and treatment of deceptively induced intimacy have been shaped by prevailing ideas about what makes intimacy valuable, including the role it plays in self-construction. These ideas have shaped and constrained the law’s operation.

The book shows that over time, the law has tended to take deceptively induced sex more seriously while becoming less concerned with deceptively induced romantic relationships. The book concludes by proposing a new framework for deciding whether and how the law should regulate deceptively induced intimacy today.