THE CRIMINAL'S RIGHT OF PRIVACY

Authors

Abstract

The dissent of Mr. Justice Brandeis in the famed wire tapping case has been of especial interest to those who are acquainted with his article in the Harvard Law Review in 1890 on "The Right of Privacy." The law has witnessed few more fascinating developments than the engrafting of this latter concept into the formula of justice, few more conspicuous examples of creative juristic effort. Concerning it Dean Pound has said: "What may almost be called the classical example (of creative activity) is the paper on the Right of Privacy in which Mr. Justice Brandeis, then at the bar, was a collaborator. A bit of juristic reasoning on the analogy of the legal rights that secure other interests of personality, showing that there was an interest in or claim to privacy as a part of personality and postulating a legal order that secures personality completely, created first discussion, then a conflict of decision, and finally through decision or statute a new chapter in the law of torts." We have been the more interested, therefore, to see what the same Brandeis as a Justice of the highest court in the land would do when a question involving the right of privacy should arise. And it is only recently that we have been afforded anything approaching that privilege.

Recommended Citation

THE CRIMINAL'S RIGHT OF PRIVACY, 27 Mich. L. Rev. 927 (1929).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol27/iss8/6