A Flower Never Blossomed: The Overshadowed Silhouette of Privacy in the Realm of the English Law of Tort

Privacy will be examined at the light of the English tort law. This essay delves into the reasons why English law has not yet recognized an over-arching principle of privacy protection in tort. After having distinguished between informational and physical privacy, attention will be paid to some landmark cases dealing with the former one. These cases show a judicial restrictive approach to the privacy protection even after the enforcement of the Human Rights Act 1998, which incorporates the European Convention on Human Rights acknowledging, among the others, the right to private life. The inadequate development of privacy within the realm of English law may be ascribed to several concurring factors. First, the concept of privacy reveals itself to be patchy. Even though privacy is fashioned as a unitary legal value, the interests underlying this latter are manifold. Second, the absence of a fully-fledged development of privacy legal protection is the result of the well-known pigeon-hole structure of English tort law. The conclusion is that reluctance to acknowledge privacy as a value worthy of general protection at law may probably only be overcome through legislative provisions regulating the requirements of liability for infringement of privacy in detail.