Privacy: Chapters 7 & 8
What is privacy? What makes our lives private? Privacy is a law today that has not been
known for very long. The idea of privacy that everyone has running through their minds is just to
be left alone. In reality what constitutes the crossing of the privacy line. It wasn't until 1890
when two men wrote in the Harvard Law Review about the "The Right to Privacy." The two
men were Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis, the two were young lawyers who had the
sense to right papers on what they thought were Americans rights to privacy. After their ideas
were published they attempted to pass their knowledge on to the court systems asking to make
laws that would follow their papers. Most court systems did not accept there law until 13 years
later when the state of New York passed the first privacy law. The law prohibited the commercial
exploitation of an individual (Pember 240).
The privacy law that the state of New York adapted well and began spreading to many
states but not vert fast, it took roughly 90 years to get the law spread. Mainly because the most
of the courts used the Bill of Rights as a persons' privacy protection. To this day there are states
that still do not have individual privacy rights. As our government more clearly defines our
privacy rights then more states will join in on adopting the rights to their laws. Within the past
couple years the government has developed for different torts that would accuse somebody in
invasion of privacy. The torts are listed as following:
1. Appropriation of name or likeness for trade purposes (Pember 241)
2. Intrusion upon an individual's solitude (Pember 241)
3. Publication of private information about an individual (Pember 241)
4. Publishing material that puts an individual in a false light (Pember 241)
From the time that these torts were declared as...