The genesis of the 'right to privacy' in American jurisprudence has long been a subject of scholarly contention. Traditional legal historians have largely maintained that the doctrine was essentially birthed by Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis in their seminal 1890 article, representing a sudden, deliberate creation of a new legal right protecting individual autonomy. However, legal scholar William Prosser offered a revisionist account, arguing that what Warren and Brandeis articulated was not a novel creation, but rather a conceptual amalgamation of existing common law protections regarding intellectual property and defamation. More recently, Robert Post has argued against the autonomy-centric view entirely, positing instead that the primary purpose of privacy torts has always been the enforcement of social norms of civility and community standards. A careful reading of the case law, however, suggests a different trajectory: rather than being a sudden invention or merely a recycling of old property laws, the legal recognition of privacy is best understood as a continuous, pragmatic judicial adaptation to the encroaching capabilities of new observational technologies.
Based on the passage above, match each scholar or group to the specific argument they advance regarding the right to privacy.
- Traditional legal historiansCharacterizes the right to privacy as a sudden, deliberate invention aimed at protecting personal autonomy.
- William ProsserAsserts that early privacy doctrine was essentially synthesized from preexisting laws concerning property and reputation.
- Robert PostViews privacy torts primarily as mechanisms for upholding societal standards of civil behavior.
- The author of the passageConsiders the development of privacy law to be an ongoing process of judicial adjustment to technological advancements.