Right to Privacy
| Author | Daniel Brannen, Richard Hanes, Elizabeth Shaw |
| Pages | 67-73 |
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Privacy is something cherished by almost all Americans. It is the right to live life without the government prying into what we do—the right to be let alone. Privacy allows us to develop into individuals with our own thoughts, beliefs, hopes, and dreams. It permits us to decide how to live our lives in our own homes. Privacy allows adults to decide who to marry, whether to have children, and how to raise a family. The right to privacy restricts how the government can investigate our lives.
Surprisingly, the words "privacy" and "right to privacy" do not appear in the U.S. Constitution. Instead, certain parts of the Constitution protect specific kinds of privacy. For example, the freedoms of expression and religion in the First Amendment protect the right to have private thoughts and ideas. The Fourth Amendment says the government may not arrest a person or search his house without good reasons. The Fifth Amendment says a criminal defendant does not have to testify against himself at trial. That means he can keep private any information about the crime he is charged with committing.
These Amendments, however, do not say Americans have a general right to privacy. Where, then, does the right of privacy come from? The
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Supreme Court developed it through decades of interpreting the U.S. Constitution.
The first Americans to mention the right to privacy were Boston lawyers named Louis D. Brandeis and Samuel D. Warren. In 1890, they published an article called "The Right to Privacy." Brandeis and Warren said Americans needed protection from newspapers that invaded privacy by exposing private lives to the public. As they do today, newspapers then often wrote embarrassing or humiliating articles about people. Brandeis and Warren said Americans should be allowed to sue newspapers to protect their privacy.
In 1916, Brandeis became a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. Twelve years later in Olmstead v. United States (1928), he wrote a famous dissenting opinion (which means he disagreed with the Court's decision in the case). Justice Brandeis said the Constitution was written to protect privacy to help Americans pursue happiness:
The makers of our Constitution ... sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against government, the right to be let alone—the most comprehensive of the rights of man and the right most valued by civilized men.
Almost four more decades passed before the Supreme Court recognized a general right of privacy. In between, some justices wrote opinions supporting such a right. In Public Utilities Commission v. Pollak (1952), Justice William O. Douglas said "the right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedoms." Then in Poe v. Ulman (1961), Justice John Marshall Harlan II referred to a Connecticut law that interfered with marriage as "an intolerable invasion of privacy."
In Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Supreme Court finally recognized a right to privacy in the U.S. Constitution. The case involved a Connecticut law that made it illegal for married couples to use contraceptives, or birth control. (Contraceptives prevent a woman from getting pregnant when she has sexual intercourse.) Nothing in the Constitution...
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