The nature and value of the moral right to privacy

Abstract

of the philosophical interest in the right to privacy seems to be in defining the concept of privacy. Judith Jarvis Thomson states that the right to privacy is derivative and that there is no need to define the boundaries of the concept of privacy.2 Thomas Scanlon argues that the right to privacy involves the right to one's freedom from intrusion.3 James Rachels is among those who define the right to privacy as one's own ability to delimit what others know about oneself.4 As a result of the difficulties regarding the question of the nature of privacy, William A. Parent states, American privacy jurisprudence is in conceptual shambles,5 and What we desperately need is a definition of privacy that captures its core, central meaning while enabling us to draw clear, precise, and plausible distinctions among the several different concepts that make up the privacy family.6 As Julie Inness states, philosophical and legal discussions of privacy can be grouped into three categories: (1) the skeptical debate about the conceptual and moral distinctness of privacy; (2) the debate about the two components of a definition of privacy the function of privacy and the content of privacy; (3) the debate about the value of privacy.7 It is important to distinguish between the concept of privacy and the right to privacy.8 This distinction is conceptually important in that one can have privacy yet not have a right to it.9 Conversely, one might have a right to privacy and yet not have her privacy (or right thereto) respected. In any case, it is helpful to ground the content of the right to privacy in a

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