About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

48 Calif. L. Rev. 383 (1960)
Privacy

handle is hein.journals/calr48 and id is 407 raw text is: California Law Review VOL. 48 AUGUST 1960 No. 3 Privacy William L. Prosser* N THE YEAR 1890 Mrs. Samuel D. Warren, a young matron of Boston, which is a large city in Massachusetts, held at her home a series of social entertainments on an elaborate scale. She was the daughter of Sen- ator Bayard of Delaware, and her husband was a wealthy young paper manufacturer, who only the year before had given up the practice of law to devote himself to an inherited business. Socially Mrs. Warren was among the 6lite; and the newspapers of Boston, and in particular the Saturday Evening Gazette, which specialized in blue blood items, covered her parties in highly personal and embarrassing detail. It was the era of yel- low journalism, when the press had begun to resort to excesses in the way of prying that have become more or less commonplace today;' and Boston was perhaps, of all of the cities in the country, the one in which a lady and a gentleman kept their names and their personal affairs out of the papers. The matter came to a head when the newspapers had a field day on the occasion of the wedding of a daughter, and Mr. Warren became annoyed It was an annoyance for which the press, the advertisers and the entertain- ment industry of America were to pay dearly over the next seventy years. Mr. Warren turned to his recent law partner, Louis D. Brandeis, who was destined not to be unknown to history. The result was a noted article, The Right to Privacy,3 in the Harvard Law Review, upon which the two men collaborated. It has come to be regarded as the outstanding example of the influence of legal periodicals upon the American law. In the Harvard * Dean, University of California School of Law, Berkeley. The press is overstepping in every direction the obvious bounds of propriety and of decency. Gossip is no longer the resource of the idle and of the vicious, but has become a trade, which is pursued with industry as well as effrontery. To satisfy a prurient taste the details of sexual relations are spread broadcast in the columns of the daily papers. To occupy the indo- lent, column upon column is filled with idle gossip, which can only be procured by intrusion upon the domestic circle. The intensity and complexity of life, attendant upon advancing civil- ization, have rendered necessary some retreat from the world, and man, under the refining influ- ence of culture, has become more sensitive to publicity, so that solitude and privacy have become more essential to the individual; but modem enterprise and invention have, through invasions upon his privacy, subjected him to mental pain and distress, far greater than could be inflicted by mere bodily injury. Warren and Brandeis, The Right to Privacy, 4 HAv. L. REv. 193, 196 (1890). 2 MAsoN, BRADErs, A FREE MAN's Lim 70 (1946). 3 4 HAv. L. REv. 193 (1890).

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most