Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-v5vhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-20T12:24:44.441Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Equal Protection Privacy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 October 2020

Scott Skinner-Thompson
Affiliation:
University of Colorado Law School
Get access

Summary

If a right exists, bedrock principles of American law generally demand that the right be equally available to all. So unassailable is this tenet that the US Supreme Court etched the phrase, “Equal Justice Under Law,” on the front of the court building in the 1930s. A plaintiff who is black should have the same substantive law applied to their claim as a plaintiff who is white, with similar results for similar claims.1 And although concrete evidence of systematic, unequal judicial results is sometimes hard to uncover, it is widely acknowledged that in many contexts the law does not, in fact, operate with an even hand.2 The white plaintiff prevails where the black plaintiff fails. Can equality, as a principle of American law, become more than hortatory? How can the law be adjusted to operate more equally, and how can those adjustments be doctrinally justified and grounded? This chapter seeks to answer these questions in a particular legal context – the tort of public disclosure of private facts – and to draw lessons from those results for privacy tort reform and the constitutionalization of tort law more broadly.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×