Opinion ID: 1755365
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Heading: History of the Right to Be Let Alone

Text: The phrase right to be let alone did not itself originate in the Revision Commission proposal, but echoes throughout more than a century of intensive legal scholarship and opinion-writing both in Florida and the nation as a whole. First appearing in Judge Cooley's treatise on The Law of Torts 29 (1st ed. 1880), the concept of a right to be let alone soon thereafter was extensively elaborated in a classic law review article by two noted jurists. Warren & Brandeis, The Right to Privacy, 4 Harv.L.Rev. 193 (1890). It was to this 1890 law review article that the Katz Court cited. Katz, 389 U.S. at 350 n. 6, 88 S.Ct. at 510-11 n. 6. In the early years of its formulation, the right to be let alone generally was conceived as a private-law tort concept  the right to be free from unwanted interference by other individuals. See Warren & Brandeis, supra. Thus, the concept of privacy was first developed to confront the problem we now characterize as the tort of invasion of privacy. This Court adopted this tort as a part of the common law of Florida in 1944, in the famous case involving an alleged invasion of privacy by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' book Cross Creek; and at that time we explicitly said that this tort was meant to protect the right of privacy. Cason v. Baskin, 155 Fla. 198, 20 So.2d 243 (1944). However, in the intervening century since the Warren and Brandeis article was written, the concept of a right to be let alone has expanded beyond its initial private-law formulation and now has given rise to a separate concept that imposes definite limits on governmental action. [12] The development of this public-law concept of privacy parallels the development in this century of new technologies and governmental techniques that have had grave potential to erode personal privacy. The formulation of privacy as a public-law concept dates roughly from 1928, at a time when totalitarian governments were rising in Europe and Asia. In that year one of the authors of the 1890 article on The Right to Privacy, Justice Louis Brandeis, first gave the phrase right to be let alone what has since become its distinctive public-law cast in one of the most famous and oft-quoted [13] dissents in American legal history: The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man's spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone  the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 478, 48 S.Ct. 564, 572, 72 L.Ed. 944 (1928) (Brandeis, J., dissenting) (emphasis added). In construing the scope of Florida's right to be let alone, we previously have looked to this formulation. T.W., 551 So.2d at 1191 (relying upon Olmstead, 277 U.S. at 478, 48 S.Ct. at 572 (Brandeis, J., dissenting)). See Hawkins, Florida Constitutional Law: A Ten-Year Retrospective on the State Bill of Rights, 14 Nova L.Rev. 693, 827 n. 674 (1990) (discussing importance of the Olmstead dissent in Florida law). As Justice Brandeis' statement suggests, the public-law concept of a right to be let alone addresses the same concerns as the private-law tort of invasion of privacy, from which it emerged [14] ; but it also has expanded to include other problems uniquely associated with state action and the related erosion of privacy in this century. As Prosser and Keeton have noted, The zone of privacy, so to speak, that is now safeguarded by the Constitution when state action is involved has been enlarged in recent years. It embraces not only the interests protected by the common law action [for invasion of privacy,] ... but it also protects to a considerable extent the autonomy of the individual to make certain important decisions of a very personal nature. W. Prosser & W. Keeton, The Law of Torts § 117, at 866 (5th ed. 1984) (emphasis added). Other legal scholars analyzing Florida's right to be let alone are in accord. One of the first scholars to study Florida's privacy amendment, Judge Cope, noted in 1978 that [m]odern conditions demand reexamination of the relationship between the individual and his government. If a free society is to remain free, there must be a physical and psychological zone of liberty for each citizen. Cope, supra at 771 (emphasis added). Distilling this analysis further, another commentator has suggested that the right to be let alone in Florida implies not merely privacy in the sense of physical and personal seclusion; it also implies that there is a certain sphere of personal autonomy that is beyond the scope of any governmental interference whatsoever, whether secluded or not. Note, Interpreting Florida's New Constitutional Right of Privacy, 33 U.Fla. L.Rev. 565, 571 (1981).