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Legal Journals On American Law

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Privacy, meaning the right to be left alone, has intellectual roots tracing back to the 19th century. On December 15, 1890, Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis had their article “The Right to Privacy” published in the Harvard Law Review. This article was highly regarded as one of the exceptional examples of the effect legal journals have on American law, and was the first of many future law review discussions. “It is our purpose to consider whether the existing law affords a principle which can properly be invoked to protect the privacy of the individual; and if it does what the nature and extent of such protection is” (Gregory, Kalven, and Epstein 1133). Warren and Brandeis stressed the importance and necessity for some form of protection for the private individual when the press is overstepping their boundaries and the indecency their gossip creates. Several decades later, in August of 1960, William L. Prosser published his article “Privacy” in the California Law Review. In this article he outlined the four classifications of privacy law which are as follows:

1. Intrusion upon the plaintiff 's seclusion or solitude, or into his private affairs.

2. Public disclosure of embarrassing private facts about the plaintiff.

3. Publicity which places the plaintiff in a false light in the public eye.

4. Appropriation, for the defendant 's advantage, of the plaintiff 's name or likeness.

The second classification refers to publication of private matters, which will be the

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