Private Law Theory

ABSTRACT
Apparently, privacy is a concept in disarray-no-one can agree what it is. Yet one answer has been largely overlooked: privacy is freedom from intrusion. In this paper I argue the merits of this account, showing that existing proposals suffer in comparison for failing to attend carefully, or at all, to the distinction between what is private, and what privacy is. This inattention has prompted accounts and definitions of privacy that are unsurprisingly partial, esoteric and so, divisive, leaving many to conclude that privacy is elusive, evanescent, fuzzy, and possibly resistant to definition altogether. Shorn of the methodological oversight, freedom from intrusion emerges as a properly general, clear account of privacy that fits our linguistic phenomena and so, as it happens, already commands everyone’s implicit assent.

Pethick, Stephen, A New Theory of Privacy (February 1, 2024).