LAU33031 Privacy, Free Speech and The Democratic State

Module Learning Outcomes with embedded Graduate Attributes  

On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:  

• Understand the relationship between privacy and freedom of expression. 
• Understand the historical development of privacy law and its interaction with freedom of expression in the European Union and comparator jurisdictions. 
• Understand the role of freedom of expression and privacy in democratic governance and the resilience of democratic orders. 
• Critically analyse developments in the regulation of surveillance and expression in the European Union. 
• Identify how both state and non-state actors impact privacy, and freedom of expression, and the role of non-state actors in democratic processes. 
• Evaluate how surveillance of citizens, and their speech, interacts with other areas of human rights law and policy. 
• Communicate effectively about the ideas examined in class via an in-class presentations, and written assessments. 

Module Content

The last decade has witnessed sustained attempts (in academic writing, in judicial decisions and in contemporary legislative and policy making activity) to reconcile the surveillance practices of states with citizens’ rights to privacy and freedom of expression. More recently, a similar attempt to reconcile these rights with the surveillance practices of non-state actors has also begun in earnest.  

This module examines the mutually supportive role of the rights to privacy and freedom of expression in cultivating democratic values, and fostering democratic resilience. It does so, in the first half of the module, by engaging in a historical analysis of how these rights emerged as part of a mutually defining exchange evidenced in court decisions and academic writings from the sixteenth century onwards. In particular, the module examines how this birth of modern privacy and freedom of expression was rooted in debates about democratic engagement, political critique and the need to limit state regulation of speech.  

The second half of the module turns to examine how this historical background framed the development of European Human rights to privacy and freedom of expression and, in particular, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU, and the European Union’s development of modern secondary laws regulating speech – and protecting privacy. The module sets these developments in the context of the Union’s founding values of the rule of law, democracy and the protection and human rights and examines how the historical evolution of privacy and freedom of expression continue to inform how contemporary EU law understands the role of such rights in sustaining democratic governance, and society.  

This module seeks to prompt students not only to recognise the mutually supportive relationship between privacy and freedom of expression, but also to identify when freedom of expression and privacy are in conflict, to ask why such conflicts arise, whether and how they are justified, and what the impacts of both rights can be in sustaining fundamental values of democratic engagement, dignity and autonomy, and the rule of law on which much modern EU law is built.  

Recommended Reading List

Some key monographs include (but are not limited to):  

• Neil Richards, Intellectual Privacy (OUP, 2015) 
• Soshanna Zuboff, Surveillance Capitalism (Profile books, 2019) 
• Khiara Bridges, The Poverty of Privacy Rights (Stanford University Press, 2017) 
• Sarah E Igo, The Known Citizen (Harvard University Press, 2018) 
• Helen Nissenbaum, Privacy in Context (Stanford University Press, 2009) 

Teaching and Learning Methods (including details of supervision)

Teaching and Learning will consist of weekly lecturers deliver to the students by the lecturer. Participation in class will be encouraged (but not assessed) by the lecturer covering key themes of each weekly topic.