The Right to Privacy & (and) Assisted Reproductive Technologies: A Comparative Study of the Law of Germany and the U.S.
![handle is hein.journals/nylsintcom21 and id is 237 raw text is: The Right to Privacy & Assisted
Reproductive Technologies:
A Comparative Study of the Law of
Germany and the U.S.
Andreas S. Voss
I. INTRODUCTION
A. Law & Medicine
The law is not static; America's most famous judge, Oliver Wendell
Holmes, Jr., has pointed out that the law cannot be dealt with as if it con-
tained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics.' Political,
social, economic, and scientific changes happen continually, which in return
demand the law's reaction. Thus, if we try to specify a particularized right in
some localized area, we discover that we have committed ourselves to a
description of an entire social order.2
For example, the development of the right to privacy, which was to a
great extent triggered by a law review article written by Samuel D. Warren
and Louis D. Brandeis,3 was a reaction to new technologies developing in
1890: the telegraph, tabloid newspapers, the high-speed printing press, and the
telephone.4 Recent inventions and business methods, Warren and Brandeis
wrote, call attention to the next step which must be taken for the protection of
the person. [Numerous mechanical devices threaten to make good the predic-
tion that what is whispered in the closet shall be proclaimed from the house-
tops].5 Similarly, the German right to privacy has been developed in reaction
to the growth of the mass media - the press, television and radio
broadcasting.6
An area in which the unique relationship between law and natural sci-
ences becomes most obvious is the field of medicine. Developments in this
area are often meteoric; medical technology develops so rapidly and perva-
sively that it risks overwhelming individuality.''7 What once was solely
1. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, THE COMMON LAW 1, Little Brown and Company, Boston,
(1881) (cited in Unitrin, Inc. v. American General Corp., 651 A.2d 1361, 1387 (Del, 1995)).
2. Mark Tushnet, An Essay on Rights, 62 Tex. L. Rev. 1363, 1379 (1984).
3. Samuel D. Warren & Louis D. Brandeis, The Right to Privacy, 4 Harv. L. Rev. 193
(1890).
4. ROBERT ELLIS SMITH, THE LAW OF PRIVACY IN A NUTSHELL 8 (1993).
5. Warren & Brandeis, supra note 3, at 195.
6. See KARL LARENZ, LEHRBUCH DES SCHULDRECHTS, ZwEITER BAND 471-72 (10th ed.
1972); HEIN KOETZ, DELIKTSRECHT 273 (2nd ed. 1979).
7. Edward J. Eberle, Human Dignity, Privacy, and Personality in German and American
Constitutional Law, 1997 Utah L. Rev. 963, 965 (1997).](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/nylsintcom21&div=16&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
What Is HeinOnline?
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most
The Right to Privacy & (and) Assisted Reproductive Technologies: A Comparative Study of the Law of Germany and the U.S.
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most