The Right to Privacy: Rethinking the “right most valued by civilized men.” Susan E. Gallagher, UMass Lowell

“The makers of our Constitution… sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone—the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.” —Louis D. Brandeis, Louis D. Brandeis ( )

Louis Brandeis, circa 1900

“Recent inventions and business methods call attention to the next step which must be taken for the protection of the person, and for securing to the individual what Judge Cooley calls the right "to be let alone." Instantaneous photographs and newspaper enterprise have invaded the sacred precincts of private and domestic life; and numerous mechanical devices threaten to make good the prediction that "what is whispered in the closet shall be proclaimed from the house- tops." — “The Right to Privacy”

“Printer’s Devils,” Puck, 1888.

“If… possessions… are protected… against description and enumeration, how much more should the acts and sayings of a man in his social and domestic relations be guarded from ruthless publicity. If you may not reproduce a woman's face photographically without her consent, how much less should be tolerated the reproduction of her face, her form, and her actions, by graphic descriptions colored to suit a gross and depraved imagination.” — “The Right to Privacy” — “The Right to Privacy”

Victoria C. Woodhull Tennie C. Claflin

“I hold that the so-called morality of society is a complicated mass of sheer impertinence… that the system of social espionage under which we live is damnable; and that the very first axiom of a true morality is for people to mind their own business, and learn to respect, religiously, the social freedom and sacred social privacy of others.” ▬ Victoria Woodhull, 1872.

"Get Thee Behind Me, (Mrs.) Satan!” Thomas Nast Harper’s Weekly, 1872 "Get Thee Behind Me, (Mrs.) Satan!” Thomas Nast Harper’s Weekly, 1872

Anthony Comstock,

Subtler and more far-reaching means of invading privacy have become available to the government. Discovery and invention have made it possible for the government, by means far more effective than stretching upon the rack, to obtain disclosure in court of what is whispered in the closet. —Louis D. Brandeis, 1928.

“The progress of science in furnishing the government with means of espionage is not likely to stop with wire tapping. Ways may some day be developed by which the government, without removing papers from secret drawers, can reproduce them in court, and by which it will be enabled to expose to a jury the most intimate occurrences of the home.” — Louis D. Brandeis, 1928.

“We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights - older than our political parties, older than our school system. Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects. Yet it is an association for as noble a purpose as any involved in our prior decisions.” — William O. Douglas — William O. Douglas (1965) Griswold v. Connecticut Home, Sweet Home (1880). Muller Company Lithographers

The Right to Privacy: Historicizing the “right most valued by civilized men.” Susan E. Gallagher, UMass Lowell