There is something about sitting in front of a doctor, a lawyer, or a priest that makes people talk, You say things in those rooms that you would never say anywhere else, and the reason you can do that is because there is a rule, both in law and in belief, that says whatever you share in that space stays there, your doctor cannot go and tell your neighbor what is wrong with you, Your lawyer cannot hand your confession to the other side, Your priest carries what you said to God and nowhere else, that is the privilege, and for a long time, it has worked.
But things get complicated when the secret a person shares in that room isn't just their secret, what if a man tells his lawyer he knows where a missing child is? what if a patient tells a doctor he's going to hurt someone? what if a person goes into confession and admits to something that hasn't concluded yet? Is the privilege still in effect?
This isn't an easy question to answer, and there is no one correct answer to it. On one side, if such a privilege is taken away, people will not talk , the man who is sick but ashamed will not go to the doctor because he won't trust that his business will stay private, the person in real legal trouble will not be honest with their lawyer because they won't know what might get passed on, the one carrying guilt will not go near a confessional because what is the point, the whole purpose of those relationships is built on the idea that you can say the full truth without fear, take that away and you have broken something that is very hard to put back together.
But on the other side, you have a life. Maybe more than one, and that sits heavily too, If a professional knows that something terrible is about to happen and says nothing because they are bound by privilege, and then that terrible thing happens, what do we call that? Can we really say the rule was worth it?
I think most people, if they are being honest, will say there has to be a limit somewhere, and actually, in many places, the law already agrees, Doctors in a lot of countries are required to report if a patient is a danger to themselves or others, lawyers have exceptions for ongoing crimes, the privilege is real, but it is not completely without edges, the problem is that those edges are not always clear, and the people who have to make those calls, the doctor, the lawyer, the priest, are making them alone, often under pressure, with no perfect answer in front of them.
What a world without any privilege would look like is honestly a quieter, more suspicious world, people would carry their secrets alone rather than risk them going anywhere, and that would not make anyone safer, it would just make people more isolated.
The better conversation is not whether to remove the privilege entirely, but where exactly it should bend and who gets to decide that, that is the harder question, and we are still working it out.
Image Credit : Chatgpt
