An Ethico-Philosophical Introduction to Privacy Case Study Discussion Privacy and the Constitution Definitions Case Study Discussion The Privacy Paradox

The Right to Privacy Samuel D.Warren and Louis D. Brandeis Harvard Law Review Vol. IV December 15, 1890 No. 5 The right of the individual to be left alone. The right to personality.

Supreme Court Rulings within Zones of Privacy Child rearing Procreation Marriage Privacy in the home Right to refuse medical treatment

Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) (Child Rearing) The Court has never attempted to define, with exactness, the liberty guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. Without doubt, it denotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint but also the right of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children, to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and generally to enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men. --Justice James Clark McReynolds

Skinner v. Oklahoma (1942) (Procreation) We are dealing here with legislation which involves one of the basic civil rights of man. Marriage and procreation are fundamental to the very existence and survival of the race. The power to sterilize, if exercised, may have subtle, far reaching and devastating effects. In evil or reckless hands it can cause races or types which are inimical to the dominant group to wither and disappear. There is no redemption for the individual whom the law touches. Any experiment which the State conducts is to his irreparable injury. He is forever deprived of a basic liberty.

Griswold v. Connecticut, (1965) (Procreation/Marrage) Would we allow the police to search the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives? The very idea is repulsive to the notions of privacy surrounding the marriage relationship.

Roe, Et Al. v. Wade, (1973) (Procreation) State criminal abortion laws, like those involved here, that except from criminality only a life-saving procedure on the mother's behalf without regard to the stage of her pregnancy and other interests involved violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which protects against state action the right to privacy, including a woman's qualified right to terminate her pregnancy.

Stanley v. Georgia, (1969) (Privacy in the Home) This right to receive information and ideas, regardless of their social worth...is fundamental to our free society. Moreover, in the context of this case--a prosecution for mere possession of printed or filmed matter in the privacy of a person's own home--that right takes on an added dimension. For also fundamental is the right to be free, except in very limited circumstances, from unwanted governmental intrusions into one's privacy.

Cruzen v. Director, Missouri Dept. of Health (1990) (Right to Refuse Medical Treatment) Although many state courts have held that a right to refuse treatment is encompassed by a generalized constitutional right of privacy, we have never so held. We believe this issue is more properly analyzed in terms of a Fourteenth Amendment liberty interest.

Katz v. U.S. (1967) Reasonable Expectation Test My understanding of the rule that has emerged from prior decisions is that there is a twofold requirement, first that a person have exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy and, second, that the expectation be one that society is prepared to recognize as "reasonable." Thus a man's home is, for most purposes, a place where he expects privacy, but objects, activities, or statements that he exposes to the "plain view" of outsiders are not "protected" because no intention to keep them to himself has been exhibited. -- Justice Harlan

Aspects of Privacy Privacy can be divided into the following separate but related concepts: Bodily privacy Privacy of communications Territorial privacy Information privacy

A (very) Short History of Privacy There is recognition of privacy in the Qur'an and in the sayings of Mohammed. The Bible has numerous references to privacy. Jewish law has long recognized the concept of being free from being watched. There were also protections in classical Greece and ancient China. Legal protections have existed in Western countries for hundreds of years. In 1361, the Justices of the Peace Act in England provided for the arrest of peeping toms and eavesdroppers. In 1765, British Lord Camden, striking down a warrant to enter a house and seize papers wrote, "We can safely say there is no law in this country to justify the defendants in what they have done; if there was, it would destroy all the comforts of society, for papers are often the dearest property any man can have." Parliamentarian William Pitt wrote, "The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the force of the Crown. It may be frail; its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storms may enter; the rain may enter - but the King of England cannot enter; all his forces dare not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement.

What I may see or hear in the course of the treatment or even outside of the treatment in regard to the life of men, which on no account one must spread abroad, I will keep to myself, holding such things shameful to be spoken about. -- From The Hippocratic Oath