Abstract

Spitting is commonly treated in legal contexts as a minor physical or public health offence; however, this classification reflects a broader doctrinal tendency to prioritise contact-based and biohazard models of harm. This paper argues that contemporary assault doctrine often privileges visible and measurable injury, resulting in the under-recognition of symbolic and dignity-based harms. Using a purposive doctrinal and sociolegal analysis of selected legal authorities, the analysis advances the central claim that spitting may produce legally significant harm through its communicative function as an act of humiliation, degradation, and social exclusion. Drawing on dignity jurisprudence, vulnerability theory, trauma scholarship, and comparative legal analysis, the paper conceptualises spitting as a form of symbolic violence capable of producing psychologically significant impacts and legally relevant forms of harm independent of physical injury. Across custodial, clinical, and public settings, selected authorities suggest that legal reasoning often prioritises infection risk and physical contact while giving comparatively limited attention to humiliation, identity threat, and other non-physical dimensions of harm. The paper argues that existing legal and human rights principles may provide a doctrinal basis for recognising communicative and dignity-based harms, but that these principles remain inconsistently operationalised within assault law. Reframing spitting within a communicative and dignity-based model of harm may enhance doctrinal coherence and align legal interpretation more closely with the lived and relational realities of harm. In doing so, the paper contributes to broader sociolegal debates concerning dignity, vulnerability, and the recognition of non-physical injury within contemporary legal frameworks.

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