ABSTRACT
This chapter looks into the formation and possible disintegration of a legal concept, right of privacy, inviting comparison with the life history of a scientific concept like “ether” or “atom.” The law of defamation might indeed have served as a base for the concept of a right of privacy itself. “Seek simplicity and distrust it” is the admonition of any science. If Samuel Warren and Louis D. Brandeis sought it, others have argued of late that we should distrust it. The position of the critics can be analyzed under two major propositions. First, in its original form the right of privacy is trivial and rather outdated. Second, in its more expansive form the concept of privacy obfuscates analysis. An analysis along functional lines might view the interest in privacy as an aspect of an interest in secrecy. In its official manifestation secrecy is a state policy serving military, diplomatic, and bureaucratic needs.
