Louis Brandeis and Samuel Warren defined protection of the private realm as the foundation of individual freedom in the modern age. Given the increasing capacity of government, the press, and other agencies and institutions to invade previously inaccessible aspects of personal activity, they argued that the law must evolve in response to technological change. Traditional prohibitions against trespass, assault, libel, and other invasive acts had afforded sufficient safeguards in previous eras, but these established principles could not, in their view, protect individuals from the "too enterprising press, the photographer, or the possessor of any other modern device for rewording or reproducing scenes or sounds." Consequently, in order to uphold the "right to one's personality" in the face of modern business practices and invasive inventions, they concluded that legal remedies had to be developed to enforce definite boundaries between public and private life.
Harvard Law Review