Document Type

Working Paper

Publication Date

7-18-2013

SSRN Discipline

PSN Subject Matter eJournals; LSN Subject Matter eJournals; Constitutional Law, Jurisprudence & Legal Philosophy eJournals; Innovation Research & Policy Network; Legal Scholarship Network; PRN Subject Matter eJournals; Philosophy Research Network; Political Theory eJournals; Law School Research Papers - Legal Studies; Law & Society eJournals; Law & Society: Public Law eJournals; Cognitive Science Network; Humanities Network; Political Science Network

Abstract

"The Polysemy of Privacy" considers the highly protean nature of the concept of "privacy" which extends to myriad disparate legal interests including nondisclosure generalized autonomy interests and even human dignity For a concept of such central importance to many systems of protecting fundamental rights its precise contours are surprisingly illdefined This lack of determinate meaning is not limited to the concept of "privacy" in the United States virtually all legal systems that utilize "privacy" or its first cousin "dignity" have experienced difficulty reducing the concept into specific carefully delineated legal interests In some respects privacy means everything "“ and nothing "“ at the same time Moreover even in those contexts where one can identify privacy at a relatively choate rather than highly abstract level of jurisprudential analysis the right of privacy often comes into direct conflict with other fundamental rights For example commitments to freedom of speech and to a free press often conflict with privacy interests these conflicts in turn force courts to secure one interest only at the price of undermining another In the United States unlike in the wider world protecting privacy interests through tort law generally will give way to advancing concerns associated with securing expressive freedoms This Article considers some of the causes and effects of the privileging of expressive freedom over privacydignity in US constitutional law and suggests that comparative legal analysis of the concept of privacy might help us to better understand both what privacy does mean and also what it should mean

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