Abstract

"Reductionism," in this context, is the view that the right to privacy necessarily depends on and derives from more fundamental rights, primarily liberty and property, and that this reduction has important normative implications for the law. Judges and scholars have articulated versions of reductionism for about a century, and yet, since the time of the seminal Pavesich opinion, none of these views has influenced the law. ;In this thesis, I offer a new version of reductionism. I start by examining the original debate concerning the existence of a right to privacy, triggered by the seminal law review article by Warren and Brandeis. I argue that this debate was not resolved in favor of such a right until Justice Cobb, in Pavesich, offered a justification for it based on fundamental political principles. I next examine the debate between the contemporary reductionists Prosser, Thomson, and Posner, and their critics. I demonstrate that reductionists have not learned the lesson implicit in the original debate: if one hopes to gain influence in the area of privacy law, he must justify his theory on the basis of fundamental political principles. Finally, I offer a more coherent and defensible reductionist view, one based on Ayn Rand's theory of individual rights. I use my reductionist theory to explain why certain undesirable outcomes are inherent in privacy law as it currently exists, recommend a return to a jurisprudence of property and liberty, and indicate a method of implementing this recommendation