The Right to Privacy

An extended legal essay traces how common law expanded from protecting bodily integrity and tangible property to recognizing reputational, familial, and intangible interests, and argues that modern inventions and press enterprise—notably instantaneous photography and wide newspaper circulation—have created new intrusions on solitude and domestic life. It analyzes existing doctrines such as nuisance and defamation to determine whether they furnish adequate remedies, examines social harms of persistent gossip and publicity, and urges judicial development of legal protection for the individual's interest in being let alone, outlining the principles and limits such protection should observe.