 According to conservatives, the state is justified in using its coercive power to uphold and enforce a community’s moral convictions and to prevent citizens from engaging in activities that offend prevailing community standards of morality and decency (e.g., Devlin 1968; Sandel 1984.) This position is sometimes called “legal moralism.” Governments also have a responsibility to prevent citizens from harming themselves. This is true even where the citizen is not a child (who may not yet be competent to make responsible judgements for themselves about what is in their own best interests), but a mature adult who is voluntarily engaged in an activity which they judge to be desirable and which causes no harm to others. The view that the state is entitled to interfere with the freedom of mentally competent adults against their will for their own good is often called “legal paternalism.”