Privacy Rights

Rights of privacy, in U.S. law, an amalgam of principles embodied in the federal Constitution or recognized by courts or lawmaking bodies concerning what Louis Brandeis, citing Judge Thomas Cooley, described in an 1890 paper (cowritten with Samuel D. Warren) as “the right to be let alone.” The right of privacy is a legal concept in both the law of torts and U.S. constitutional law. The tort concept is of 19th-century origin. Subject to limitations of public policy, it asserts a right of persons to recover damages or obtain injunctive relief for unjustifiable invasions of privacy prompted by motives of gain, curiosity, or malice. In torts law, privacy is a right not to be disturbed emotionally by conduct designed to subject the victim to great tensions by baring his intimate life and affairs to public view or by humiliating and annoying invasions of his solitude. Less broad protections of privacy are afforded public officials and other prominent persons considered to be “public figures,” as defined by law