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The Right to Privacy
Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis (1890)
The seminal Harvard Law Review article that established the legal concept of a right to privacy in American law.
Significance
Created the legal foundation for privacy rights in America. Cited in Griswold v. Connecticut and subsequent privacy cases.
Selected Excerpt
That the individual shall have full protection in person and in property is a principle as old as the common law; but it has been found necessary from time to time to define anew the exact nature and extent of such protection. The intensity and complexity of life, attendant upon advancing civilization, have rendered necessary some retreat from the world, and man, under the refining influence of culture, has become more sensitive to publicity, so that solitude and privacy have become more essential to the individual.
technologycivil-rights
This text is in the public domain. Original publication: 1890.