From Right to Wrong: Grounding a "Right" to Privacy in the "Wrongs" of Tort

Abstract

This article discusses the theoretical foundations for a common law tort of invasion of privacy. The author argues that invading a person’s “right” to privacy is conduct that can be regarded as a tortious “wrong.” He illustrates this by integrating privacyinto the work of several leading tort theorists and also by drawing analogies between privacy and defamation, on the one hand, and battery and trespass, on the other. He concludes that asking tort to protect privacy does not ask it to do work of a kind any different in substance from that which it has long been doing.