Summary
“Privacy is something cherished by almost all Americans. It is the right to live life without the government prying into what we done right to be let alone. Privacy allows us to develop into individuals with our own thoughts, beliefs, hopes, and dreams. It permits us to decide how to live our lives in our own homes. Privacy allows adults to decide who to marry, whether to have children, and how to raise a family. The right to privacy restricts how the government can investigate our lives.” – Ellen Alderman
Today, when voyeurs, marketers, and the curious are invading so many aspects of what has traditionally been considered the individual's inviolate personal domain, this book is a God- send in helping us understand what it is we have with the right to privacy, and also in helping us to focus on what is so much at risk. While the word "privacy" appears nowhere in our
Constitution, a majority of Americans fervently believe that their right to privacy is a key element which is central to the way they live their public and personal lives, and that it is also key to the viability of the democratic system. Given the fact that it is a somewhat abstract, ambiguous, and difficult idea to define, privacy is indeed seen as being a critical and irreplaceable basic right of individuals.
For example, the freedoms of expression and religion in the First Amendment protect the right to have private thoughts and ideas. The Fourth Amendment says the government may not arrest a person or search his house without good reasons. The Fifth Amendment says a criminal defendant does not have to testify against himself at trial. That means he can keep private any information about the crime he is charged with committing. These Amendments, however, do not say Americans have a general right to privacy. Where, then, does the right of privacy come from? The Supreme Court developed it through decades of interpreting the U.S. Constitution.
In this wonderful, eminently accessible, and very readable book, Ellen Alderman and
Caroline Kennedy, produce a gem of a work that offers a thoughtful, absorbing, and provocative overview of what the generally perceived right to privacy means for us as citizens and individuals. Using a well-integrated series of landmark cases, trial decisions, and an entertaining plethora of anecdotal situations, the authors render this abstract, complicated, and critically important legal right much more understandable and comprehensible.

JOAN W. v. CITY OF CHICAGO
The Strip Search Cases Joan, a physician in her mid-thirties practicing in Chicago, was arrested for a traffic violation on January 28, 1978. Five female police department employees (the matrons), strip searched her. During the search, Joan was forced to remove her clothing and to expose the vaginal and anal areas of her body. The matrons threatened her when she initially refused to comply, used vulgar language, and laughed at her. Joan testified that the incident caused her emotional distress that manifested itself in reduced socializing, poor work performance, paranoia, suicidal feelings, depression, and an inability to disrobe in any place other than a closet. She introduced evidence tending to show that she was peculiarly sensitive to the kind of physical violation she had endured because she was a private person who even during high school gym classes could not completely disrobe in front of others and was conscious of her physical disabilities caused by her chronic arthritis. According to the book, a federal district court decided that, even in the form described by the city, the strip search policy was unconstitutional. The court did say that a strip search may be justified if it were reasonable grounds to believe that a woman was hiding contraband in a body cavity. But a strip search of a woman arrested only for traffic violation was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Furthermore, the women of the 1978 Chicago case trials were awarded an over $100,00 by the court for damages that the matrons had committed. Although the women went home with a “flagrantly extravagant” amount of cash, they also went home angry for what the matrons had caused them emotionally. I agree with the court in deciding to give the women a large amount of money for what they had gone through, but I disagree with them for not putting a tougher strip search policy.
Also, they judges did nothing to the matrons who had been a part on strip searching women for little causes.

FROM GRISWOLD TO CASEY
The Contraception and Abortion Cases
If privacy protects the right to avoid getting pregnant by using birth control, does it protect a right to end pregnancy by having abortion? This is one of the most fiercely debated questions in the United States. Abortion rights activists say women, whose bodies are the ones affected by pregnancy, have a constitutional right to have an abortion. They say the medical risks and long term consequences of having a baby give women this right. Opponents of abortion say an unborn fetus is a living person with a right to life.
For them, abortion is murder. In the landmark decision of Roe v. Wade (1973), the
Supreme Court said privacy protects the right to have an abortion until the fetus, the unborn, can live outside the mother's womb. At that point, the state can protect the unborn's life by preventing abortion unless it is necessary to save the mother's life. After Roe, people continue to argue, sometimes violently, about whether abortion should be legal. I don’t/do agree with Roe v. Wade judge decision for personal beliefs. I agree a woman should only be given the right to abort in events where she has been raped and/or sexually abused. Unless the unborn fetus was a cause of unprotected sex, then I disagree, the woman should not have a right to kill an unborn life. I also agree that an underage girl who has been sexually abuse or raped should undergo the decision to abortion with parental approval. QUILL v. KOPPELL
The Right-to-Die Cases
The last case was the issue in Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health (1990).
After an automobile accident in 1983, Nancy Cruzan was alive but unable to move, speak, or communicate almost no hope of recovery. Believing Nancy would not want to live like that, her family decided to shut off her life support system. The State of Missouri would not allow it, so
Nancy's family took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Although the Supreme Court decided in Missouri's favor, it also said Americans have a right to refuse unwanted medical treatment, even if it will result in death. In other words, the right of privacy includes a right to die. Nancy's family was allowed to remove the life support system only after coming up with more evidence that Nancy would not want to live that way.
The right of privacy lets Americans decide how to live. Does it also protect a right to die?
If a person has only six painful months to live while dying from cancer, does she have a right to end her life to avoid the pain. Can a family shut off the life support system for someone who will be in a coma for the rest of her life?
The right to die came up again in Washington v. Glucksberg (1997). Washington, like most states, had a law making it illegal to help someone end her life. A group of physicians and terminally ill patients filed a lawsuit saying the law interfered with the right to die. They argued that people who are dying from painful illnesses have a right to end their lives with dignity rather than suffer until death. The Supreme Court disagreed. It said the right to die in Cruzan was a right to refuse medical treatment. The right of privacy does not include a right to be killed with medical assistance. I agree with the judges’ decision to involve family members in order to allow the state to separate an individual from life support only if the victim wants to and is allowing it. I also agree with the judge to make sure that the victim gives a sign to approve the removal of life support.
What I don’t agree is the judges’ decision to allow the medical staff to slowly deteriorate the victims health with medicinal procedures. The medical staff and hospital should not be allowed to slowly kill a victim by giving them medicine. It’s against the constitutional law.

SHOARS v. EPSON AMERICA, INC.
High-Tech Monitoring
Accoring to the book, Americans are protected by privacy laws to a certain degree. The federal Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 regulates the government's use of wiretapping to listen to telephone conversations. The Privacy Protection Act of 1974 and the
Freedom of Information Act require the government to be fair when it collects, uses, and discloses private information. Sometimes, however, people file lawsuits saying the government has gone too far with an investigation.
That was the case in Watkins v. United States (1957). In the 1950s, Congress was investigating communist activity in the United States. Communists were members of a political party that wanted to overthrow the federal government. John T. Watkins, a labor union official, was called before Congress to testify about known communists. Watkins refused to identify people who used to be, but no longer were, members of the Communist party. Watkins was convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to answer such questions, but the Supreme Court reversed his conviction. The Court said Congress does not have unlimited power to investigate the private lives of American citizens.
The end of the twentieth century has been called the beginning of the Information Age.
Computers store vast amounts of information about people. Americans naturally are concerned about private information becoming available to the public. They also fear invasion of privacy by governmental agents trying to investigate criminal activity. At the same time, the government needs to investigate and catch criminals to bring them to justice.
Right to privacy cases came into the Information Age in Whalen v. Roe (1977). New
York State had a computer system that stored the names and addresses of patients who received prescription medicines and drugs. The system was designed to control the illegal use of such drugs. Patients filed a lawsuit saying the computer system violated their right to privacy. The patients were afraid they would be called drug addicts if the public got access to the prescription information. The U.S. Supreme Court said the computer system did not violate the right of privacy because the law required New York to keep the prescription information secret. As computers become more powerful and store ever increasing amounts of information, Americans need to work harder to protect their right to privacy. I agree with the judges’ decision to deny the lawsuit. Every person is required to filed information in order to keep medicinal substances in check. Computers maintain drugs in check according to names, symptoms and addresses. It provides a good service for people who try to corrupt the system when trying to get drugs. On the other hand, I disagree with the judges’ decision with allowing the federal government to allow a full detention and suppression on a person who wouldn’t provide names of members of a communist party. It is against the constitutional rights to privacy of identity.

Personal Note
The book examines six general areas of tension and concern regarding the right to privacy; privacy versus law enforcement, privacy and yourself, privacy versus the press, privacy versus the voyeur, privacy in the workplace, and privacy versus information. In examining each of these issues, the authors engage what the right to privacy means in practical terms. For example, can one refuse to comply if a police officer asks permission to look through one's luggage? Does your employer have a right to know your sexual orientation? Can the electronic media invade your home in pursuit of a hot story? In each of these cases, they also show how the rights to privacy must be seen and understood in the context of other public and individual rights and prerogatives.
In all this cogent and compelling narrative, one hear the consistent voice of caution and reason, for the authors are mindful of the fact that we live in a society in which our individual rights as citizens and individuals are under continuing assault, and are very much under threat from other competing needs and concerns. This is an extremely thoughtful, straightforward, and an eminently compelling argument on behalf of public education and enlightened self-interest.
This is a wonderful book, and one I highly recommend. Enjoy.