No Corn on This Cobb: Why Reductionists Should Be All Ears for Pavesich 42 Brandeis Law Journal 2003-2004

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42 Brandeis L.J. 751 (2003-2004)
No Corn on This Cobb: Why Reductionists Should Be All Ears for Pavesich

handle is hein.journals/branlaj42 and id is 759 raw text is: NO CORN ON THIS COBB: WHY REDUCTIONISTS
SHOULD BE ALL EARS FOR PA VESICH
Amy Peikoff
The famous commentator on the law of privacy, Dean Prosser, observed
that: [N]o other tort has received such an outpouring of comment in advocacy
of its bare existence.' While there has been less comment opposing- or even
questioning - its existence,2 in recent decades scholars have again become
interested in the topic. Some feminist scholars have criticized the tort right to
privacy on the grounds that it makes it easier for those who abuse women to
conceal the evidence. Other commentators have opposed only the
constitutional right to privacy - which was arguably a departure from the
original privacy tort - on the grounds that the word privacy never appears in
the Constitution or Bill of Rights.4 Some theorists, known in the literature as
reductionists,5 believe that the right to privacy derives from other rights - the
. Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin; Ph.D, (Philosophy), University of
Southern California 2003; J.D., University of California Los Angeles School of Law 1998; B.S.,
University of California Los Angeles 1992. Thank you to S.A. Lloyd and Tara Smith for
comments on early drafts of this piece. Any errors or omissions are, of course, my own.
1 WILLIAM L. PROSSER & W. PAGE KEETON, PROSSER AND KEETON ON THE LAW OF TORTS
壯 802-3 (4th ed. 1971).
2 See, e.g., William L. Prosser, Privacy, 48 CAL. L. REV. 383, 384 nn.6-7 (1960).
3 See, e.g., ANITA L. ALLEN, WHY PRIVACY ISN'T EVERYTHING: FEMINIST REFLECTIONS ON
PERSONAL ACCOUNTABILITY (2003); CATHARINE A. MACKINNON, TOWARD A FEMINIST THEORY
OF THE STATE 101 (1989) ([Tlhe legal concept of privacy can and has shielded the place of
battery, marital rape, and women's exploited labor; has preserved the central institutions
whereby women are deprived of identity, autonomy, control and self-definition; and has
protected the primary activity through which male supremacy is expressed and enforced.). Not
all feminists would recommend eliminating the legal right to privacy, however. See ANITA
ALLEN, UNEASY ACCESS: PRIVACY FOR WOMEN IN A FREE SOCIETY (1988); JEAN BETHKE
ELSHTAIN, DEMOCRACY ON TRIAL (1995); JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN, PUBLIC MAN, PRIVATE
WOMAN: WOMEN IN SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THOUGHT (1981).
4 See, e.g., ROBERT BORK, THE TEMPTING OF AMERICA: THE POLITICAL SEDUCTION OF THE
LAW (1990).
5 JULIE C. INNESS, PRIVACY, INTIMACY AND ISOLATION 38 (1992); see also Ferdinand D.
Schoeman, Privacy: Philosophical Dimensions of the Literature, in PHILOSOPHICAL DIMENSIONS
OF PRIVACY: AN ANTHOLOGY 1, 5 (Ferdinand D. Schoeman ed., 1984).