Privacy is a Value Worth Protecting
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Although a “right to privacy” is not mentioned in the Bill of Rights, the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of various privacy interests, deriving the right to privacy from the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth amendments. Since the late 1950s, the Court has upheld, under the First Amendment and due process clause, a series of privacy interests, such as “associational privacy,” “political privacy,” and the “right to anonymity in public expression.” - Priscilla Reagan, Professor of Political Science at George Mason University.
1. PRIVACY IS CONSTITUTIONALLY PROTECTED
Priscilla Regan, professor of political science at George Mason University, LEGISLATING PRIVACY, 1995, p. 35.
Although a “right to privacy” is not mentioned in the Bill of Rights, the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of various privacy interests, deriving the right to privacy from the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth amendments. Since the late 1950s, the Court has upheld, under the First Amendment and due process clause, a series of privacy interests, such as “associational privacy,” “political privacy,” and the “right to anonymity in public expression.”
The Court did not view these as privacy rights per se but saw privacy as important in supporting the values protected by the First Amendment. The Supreme Court also has found protection for a right to privacy against unreasonable surveillance and compulsory disclosure in the Third Amendment’s prohibition against quartering soldiers.
2. PRIVACY IS CONSTITUTIONALLY PROTECTED
Edward Bloustein, professor of law at Rutgers University, PHILOSOPHICAL DIMENSIONS OF PRIVACY, edited by Ferdinand Schoeman, 1984, p. 165-6.
Thus, from the early Boyd case to the recent case of Silverman v. United States, the Supreme Court has made clear that the “Fourth Amendment gives a man the right to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion” and that this right is of “the very essence of constitutional liberty and security.” “The Fourth Amendment,” the Court has declared, “forbids every search that is unreasonable and is construed to safeguard the right of privacy.” Moreover, the Court has proclaimed that “the security of one’s privacy against arbitrary intrusion by the police…is basic to a free society.”
3. PRIVACY IS VITAL TO DEMOCRACY AND OTHER LIBERTIES
Ruth Gavison, professor of law at Hebrew University, PHILOSOPHICAL DIMENSIONS OF PRIVACY, edited by Ferdinand Schoeman, 1984, p. 370.
This is true even though democracies are not necessarily liberal. A country might restrict certain activities, but it must allow some liberty of political action if it is to remain a democracy. This liberty requires privacy, for individuals must have the right to keep private their votes, their political discussions, and their associations if they are to be able to exercise their liberty to the fullest extent. Privacy is crucial to democracy in providing the opportunity for parties to work out their political positions, and to compromise with opposing factions, before subjecting their positions to public scrutiny. Denying the privacy necessary for these interactions would determine the democratic process.
4. PRIVACY IS VITAL FOR DEMOCRACY
Ruth Gavison, professor of law at Hebrew University, PHILOSOPHICAL DIMENSIONS OF PRIVACY, edited by Ferdinand Schoeman, 1984, p. 369-370.
Privacy is also essential to democratic government because it fosters and encourages the moral autonomy of the citizen, a central requirement of a democracy. Part of the justification for majority rule and the right to vote is the assumption that individuals should participate in political decisions by forming judgments and expressing preferences. Thus, to the extent that privacy is important for autonomy, it is important for democracy as well.
5. PRIVACY IS CRITICAL FOR
Charles Fried, former professor of law at Harvard University, PHILOSOPHICAL DIMENSIONS OF PRIVACY, edited by Ferdinand Schoeman, 1984, p. 212.
Thus this most complete form of privacy is perhaps also the most basic, as it is necessary not only to our freedom to define our relations to others but also to our freedom to define ourselves. To be deprived of this control not only over what we do but over who we are is the ultimate assault on liberty, personality, and self-respect.
6. EVERY INDIVIDUAL HAS AN A PRIORI RIGHT TO PRIVACY
Charles Fried, former professor of law at Harvard University, PHILOSOPHICAL DIMENSIONS OF PRIVACY, edited by Ferdinand Schoeman, 1984, p. 206.
The view of morality upon which my conception of privacy rests is one which recognizes basic rights in persons, rights to which all are entitled equally, by virtue of their status as persons. These rights are subject to qualification only in order to ensure equal protection of the same rights in others. In this sense, the view is Kantian: it requires recognition of persons as ends, and forbids the overriding of their most fundamental interests for the purpose of maximizing the happiness or welfare of all. It has received contemporary exposition in the work of John Rawls, who--summing up the fundamental interests of persons in the term “liberty”--has formulated the maxim that social institutions must be framed so as to entitle each person to the maximum liberty compatible with a like liberty for all.
7. PRIVACY IS CRUCIAL FOR AUTONOMY
Joseph Kupfer, professor of philosophy at Iowa State University, AUTONOMY AND SOCIAL INTERACTION, 1990, p. 135.
But there is a further way in which privacy fosters the kind of self-concept essential to autonomy. Privacy enables self-knowledge, self-criticism, and self-evaluation. This sort of control over self-concept and self is a second-order autonomy. It is analogous to the second-order mastery of language enjoyed when the individual acquires the ability to self-consciously compose, aware of alternatives in expression and style.
8. PRIVACY IS CRUCIAL FOR AUTONOMY
Joseph Kupfer, professor of philosophy at Iowa State University, AUTONOMY AND SOCIAL INTERACTION, 1990, p. 6.
On the other hand, autonomy is promoted or limited, developed or truncated, by virtue of our interactions with others. Privacy, for example, is essential to the development of the sort of self-concept needed for autonomous living. In order for an individual to develop a conception of himself as an independent originator of thought and action, he must enjoy periods of independence from interference and observation.
9. AUTONOMY UNDERLIES MORAL ACTION
Joseph Kupfer, professor of philosophy at Iowa State University, AUTONOMY AND SOCIAL INTERACTION, 1990, p. 45.
Autonomy is the basis for moral behavior and responsibility, in a word--moral agency. Without autonomy individuals cannot cogently be held responsible for their conduct or deserve praise and blame. People who are governed by external forces, are dependent on others, or who can’t control their own impulses lack moral responsibility. Autonomy is also essential to moral agency in the deeper sense of self-reflection. As indicated in the previous chapter, self-consciously reflecting on one’s values and choosing the life we lead define a more complete autonomy. This more complete autonomy, moreover, enhances the individual’s moral agency. The more we scrutinize over values and act in light of such scrutiny, the more moral agency we exhibit.
10. PRIVACY SUSTAINS INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS
Charles Fried, former professor of law at Harvard University, PHILOSOPHICAL DIMENSIONS OF PRIVACY, edited by Ferdinand Schoeman, 1984, p. 205.
It is my thesis that privacy is not just one possible means among others to insure some other value, but that it is necessarily related to the ends and relations of the most fundamental sort: respect, love, friendship and trust. Privacy is not merely a good technique for furthering these fundamental relations; rather without privacy they are simply inconceivable. They require a context of privacy or the possibility of privacy for their existence. To make clear the necessity of privacy as a context for respect, love, friendship and trust is to bring out also why a threat to privacy seems to threaten our very integrity as persons. To respect, love, trust, feel affection for others and to regard ourselves as the objects of love, trust and affection is at the heart of our notion of ourselves as persons among persons, and privacy is the necessary atmosphere for these attitudes and actions, as oxygen is for combustion.
11. PRIVACY PROTECTS OTHER RIGHTS
Anita Allen, professor of law at University of Pennsylvania, WILLIAM & MARY LAW REVIEW, march, 1999, np., lexis-nexis.
Scholars and other commentators associate privacy with several important clusters of value. Privacy has value relative to normative conceptions of spiritual personality, political freedom, health and welfare, human dignity, and autonomy.
12. PRIVACY IS IMPORTANT EVEN IF IT ISN’T ABSOLUTE
Robert Drinan, professor of law at Georgetown University, AMERICA, November 13, 1999, np., lexis-nexis.
Privacy as guaranteed in the Fourth and Fifth Amendments and in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ratified by the
13. PRIVACY IS ESSENTIAL TO INDIVIDUALISM
Edward Bloustein, professor of law, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW, 1964, p. 1003.
The man who is compelled to live every minute of his life among others and whose every need, thought, desire, fancy or gratification is subject to public scrutiny, has been deprived of his individuality and human dignity. Such an individual merges with the mass. His opinions, being public, tend never to be different, his aspirations, being known tend always to be conventionally accepted ones. His feelings, being openly exhibited, tend to lose their quality of unique personal warmth and to become the feelings of every man.
14. PRIVACY IS THE MOST IMPORTANT VALUE
Louis Brandeis, former Supreme Court Justice, PHILOSOPHICAL DIMENSIONS OF PRIVACY, edited by Ferdinand Schoeman, 1984, P. 186.
The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man’s spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect. . . . They 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.