Author Description

Theoretically, The Right To Privacy Is The Quintessential Right Of The Individual, Allowing A Person To Make Life Choices That Are Best For Her Or Him, Regardless Of The Beliefs Of The Majority. Yet The Right To Privacy In The United States Has Proven Problematic For Both Political Theorists And Constitutional Scholars, As It Does Not Conform To Theoretical Conceptions Of Privacy Or To Existing Theories Of Constitutional Development. Mary Mcthomas Provides A New Model That Helps Us To Think About Both The Right To Privacy As Well As Constitutional Development. She Divides Privacy Issues Into Two Categories, And Then Illustrates How The Two Categories Are Treated Differently. The First Category, Proprietary Privacy, Covers Such Issues As Medical Records And Wiretapping. The Second Category, Decisional Privacy, Involves Making Decisions About Intimate Matters Such As The Right To Die, Same-sex Marriage, And Abortion. Mcthomas Tracks And Assesses Higher Court Cases In Conversational Privacy, Representative Of Proprietary Privacy, And Court Cases In Marital Privacy, Representative Of Decisional Privacy. She Concludes That Different Types Of Privacy Are Treated Differently By The Courts, Resulting In A Dual System Of Privacy In Which Decisional Privacy Rights Are Not Equally Protected For All Individuals But Instead Are Limited By Community Standards And Social Norms. This Book Brings The Theoretical Conceptions And The Practice Of Privacy Rights Together, Explaining What Has Happened In The Area Up Until This Point, And Offering Ways To Predict How The Courts Will Handle Some Of Today's Most Contentious Issues--p. [4] Of Cover. Introduction -- Legal History And Theoretical Development: The Different Foundations And Formations Of Decisional And Proprietary Privacy -- Marital Privacy -- Conversational Privacy -- Theoretical And Political Implications -- Conclusion. Mary Mcthomas. Includes Bibliographical References (pages 113-116) And Index.