Abstract

Beginning with Warren and Brandeis, I canvass the development and success of privacy in various legal issues. Warren and Brandeis focused on privacy as protection against unwanted publication of personal information. Prosser cataloged four case types including intrusion into one's seclusion, publication of embarrassing private facts, appropriating one's name or likeness, and publicity placing one in a 'false light.' In the American constitution, privacy emerges from the 4th amendment, and protects against unwarranted searches and seizures of personal property, papers or effects. Constitutional privacy developed as protection for certain rights to engage in sex and marriage, rights controlling many aspects of procreation, and the right to make some kinds of decisions that are centrally important to the individual. ;Chapters two and three explore six paradigm philosophical approaches to privacy: three from a thin legal interpretation and three from a thicker moral interpretation. Privacy has been identified with mere control over information or has been derided completely as a pseudo-right easily reduced to less controversial rights like property. Feinberg and Henkin eliminate constitutional privacy because it concerns autonomy and not privacy. Thomson eliminates privacy altogether because it is a pseudo-right overlapped by and confused with basic rights. Parent focuses on privacy only as protection for personal information. Broader conceptions consider privacy fundamental to human moral and psychological development, defending privacy as a way to protect autonomy from state control. Schoeman claims that privacy is preserved when information is not consolidated. Nagel safeguards public discourse from contamination by personal material, and DeCew identifies privacy as a cluster concept covering information, bodily access, and personal expression. ;In chapter four I defend a thin conception of privacy and consider the feminist critique of the public/private distinction, which centers on privacy as a shield for practices that devalue, degrade or abuse women. This critique sees privacy in terms of autonomy establishing a private inner sanctum ruled by the head of the household. A liberal understanding of privacy undermines the feminist critique by limiting privacy against the power of the state, where privacy cannot be used to shield actions that, like abuse, violate criminal statutes