The US Constitution does not explicitly mention any right of privacy. Still, Justice Harry Blackmun, writing in 1973 for the majority in Roe v. Wade, acknowledged that ‘the Court has recognized that a right of personal privacy, or a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy, does exist under the Constitution.’ He enumerated cases in which the Court had upheld the right of personal privacy in matters to do with marriage, family relationships, contraception, childbirth, child rearing, and education, noting also constitutional protections against government intrusion into the privacy of the home without a legal cause and a warrant. Even so, he rejected ‘an unlimited right to do with one’s body as one pleases.’
What is this privacy that appears to be protected? Is it (as Blackmun suggests) a matter of control over certain zones (for example one’s person, one’s bedroom, or one’s home)? If so, how can the concept of privacy extend to such categories of information as for example one’s sexual orientation, one’s health or one’s genetic endowment? Is the term "privacy" a kind term, with many species falling under it? If so, how are the species related to each other? Do rights to privacy exist? If so, what kind of rights are they, and what kind of entity is the rights bearer in the first instance? Do these rights rest on empirical facts, and what relations do they bear to other rights? Whether or not rights to privacy exist as such, are protections of privacy or practices of privacy worth having?
How is privacy, as well as violations of it, experienced? Is privacy a human need? And if so, is the need for privacy special to the human species? Are rights to privacy (if they exist) culturally dependent, or dependent upon legal or moral practices? Do they evolve, with developments in soci technology and culture? And if so, how?
Table of Contents:
Anita L. Allen
The Virtuous Spy: Privacy as an Ethical Limit
Geoffrey Brennan
The Economy of Privacy: Institutional Design in the Economy of Esteem
Leslie P. Francis
Privacy and Confidentiality: The Importance of Context
Chandran Kukathas
Cultural Privacy
Scott Anderson
Privacy without the Right to Privacy
David Matheson
A Distributive Reductionism about the Right to Privacy
Steve Matthews
Privacy, Separation and Control
David Meeler
Is Information All We Need to Protect?
Travis Dumsday
Group Privacy and Government Surveillance of Religious Services