THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY. THE extension and development of the law of individual rights has become a study of absorbing interest since the late Sir Henry Maine traced the history of many modern legal conceptions to the earliest re cords of juristic thought in Ancient Greece and Rome. From the time that he gave his labors to the world, a large body of workers in the domain of jurisprudence are devoting their attention to its study as a progressive science. While the demands of a progressive society compel a shifting of the ancient boundaries of rights and duties, a historical grasp of legal ideas liberates the mind of the jurist from the conventions and artificial trammels peculiar to each age and facilitates a recognition of new rights. Start ing from the conception of corporeal prop erty, we have arrived at the notion of incor poreal rights and the law has come to recognize property " in- the products and processes of the mind, as works of literature and art, goodwill, trade-secrets and trade marks." The law has also accorded its protection to the free and undisturbed pur suit of one's calling which is the means of acquiring property. We have again, beginning with the notion of a right to personal safety and to per sonal freedom, advanced to the recognition of a right to the society of certain relations and to freedom of contract. The scope of personal immunity has been extended beyond the body of the individual to his reputation. Thoughts, emotions and sen sations have acquired legal recognition in certain respects. The progress of civiliza tion is forcing into prominence the necessity for recognizing and giving adequate protec tion to new rights. To quote from an article in the 4th vol. of the " Harvard Law Review," p. 195, " Instantaneous photographs and newspaper enterprise have invaded the sacred
precincts of private and domestic life, and numerous mechanical devices threaten to make good the prediction, that what is whispered in the closet shall be proclaimed from the house-tops. For years there has been a feeling that the law must afford some remedy for the unauthorized circulation of portraits of private persons." Messrs. War ren and Brandeis have in the course of a very able review demonstrated, in the article we have already referred to, and from which we shall make no apology to quote very largely, the necessity for the recognition of the right to privacy. There is no de cided case in the English reports in which the right in question has obtained distinct acceptance. In a recent American case, Schuyler v. Curtis, Judge O'Brien has accepted the position contended for by Messrs. Warren and Brandeis. In an action for an injunc tion to restrain certain enthusiasts from set ting up a bust after her death, of one Mrs. Schuyler who was largely interested in pri vate charities, though she had never entered public life, Judge O'Brien granted the injunc tion on the ground that she was a private character and that there was a right to pri vacy entitled to protection. The English case of Monson v. Tussaud, which is an action for an injunction against the exhibition of an effigy of the plaintiff in waxwork, and an account of which has recently appeared in the English " Law Journal," raises the ques tion, and the decision of the judges is awaited with great interest. There are, of course, English cases which vaguely shadow forth a principle which, there is good reason to be lieve, is not much removed from the right to privacy. " The legal doctrines relating to infractions of what is ordinarily termed the common law right to intellectual and artistic property are, it is believed, but in
