Privacy Law and Theory: Transatlantic Perspectives

This module will explore, from a legal, historical and social perspective, how the concept of privacy emerged in European and North American political and legal thought (in particular from the eighteenth century onwards). The module is particularly concerned with how, following this emergence, the right to privacy (and the content of that right) developed in large part as a result of judicial and academic dialogues between the North America and Europe.

The aim of the module is to enable students to identify the historical and social origins of modern privacy jurisprudence, and to highlight how modern, European, civil law privacy thinking has been formed not in isolation, but through the exchange of ideas with North American and common law jurisdictions. In doing so, the module seeks to equip students to unpick the influences on modern privacy thinking, and to analyse the limits and shortcomings – as well as the strengths – of modern privacy law.

During the course of the semester, students will present a two page ‘presentation paper’ in class. This paper will analyse an assigned reading from the course using a template which will be provided to students in the first week of classes.

At the end of the module, students will complete an independent research essay, on a topic approved by the lecturer, that explores in detail a topic covered in the course of the module..

The topics of the seminars will include:

1. Classical conceptions of private spaces and private life
2. Privacy of the home in common law thought
3. Privacy and property: a patriarchal rights jurisprudence?
4. Constitutionalising Privacy in the Eighteenth Century
5. Privacy as a personality based right in the Nineteenth Century
6. The Great Schism: Private and Public law conceptions of privacy
7. Privacy as a Human Right in the Twentieth Century
8. Privacy as Control and the Emergence of Data Protection
9. Interrogating the Content of Modern Privacy Law
10. Relational Theories of Privacy: Trust, Communication and Relationships
11. The Future of Privacy Law

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of the module students should be able to:

• To formulate their own account of the development of the concept of privacy
• To formulate their own account of the development of modern privacy laws
• To understand the benefits and risks of different models of privacy protection
• To critically assess the differences and similarities between European and North American concepts of privacy, and the laws which give force to those concepts
• To identity issues with modern privacy jurisprudence
• To assess critically the uses and limits of privacy law
• To engage in comparative research and writing on privacy law and theory.

Assessment

• Essay 5,000 maximum word limit (inc. footnotes) – 80%
• Class attendance - 20%

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