The Supreme Court: A Vote for the Press over Privacy

The "right to be let alone" took a vital new direction in the 1890 Harvard Law Review. In an article that was to become the most famous of all U.S. law-review articles, Boston Attorneys Samuel D. Warren and Louis D.

Brandeis denounced yellow-press invasions of "the sacred precincts of private and domestic life." The denunciation contained obvious merit; over the years, 34 states have guaranteed personal privacy in varying degrees. The denunciation also bore the seeds of conflict with the First Amendment guarantee of free dom of the press. Sooner or later,...

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