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Justifying Privacy: The Indian Supreme Court’s Comparative Analysis

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The Indian Yearbook of Comparative Law 2018

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Abstract

The opinion authored by Justice Chandrachud in K. S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India has extensively employed philosophical and comparative materials in justifying a fundamental right to privacy under the Constitution of India. Here, we examine some implications of the reliance on such materials. We first argue that the court relies on a strong liberty-based zonal view of privacy. However, its reliance on Aristotle’s views is controversial, and reliance on JS Mill’s views does not immediately yield a strong zonal argument. The opinion’s aggregation of “intimacy-based”, “expectation-based”, and “other guarantees-based” justifications that are reflected in decisions in the USA also presents conceptual difficulties in understanding the composition of a private zone. We then point out that as in the USA and South Africa, liberty-based justifications in the opinion gradually gravitate towards autonomy-, personhood- and finally, dignity-based accounts. The opinion’s theoretical explanation of the relationship between these concepts however makes their individual content elusive and warrants ironing out of some inconsistencies that emerge. Dignity-based views may not yield a zonal argument like the liberty-based views employed by the opinion earlier. We then indicate that dignity-based arguments for privacy do have to contend with certain differences with liberty-based views owing to their distinct historical evolution in law, and in light of the liberty-restraining potential of dignity.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    M. P. Sharma v. Satish Chandra, (1954) SCR 1077.

  2. 2.

    Kharak Singh v. State of UP, (1964) 1 SCR 332.

  3. 3.

    Subbarao J, Ibid., at Para 28.

  4. 4.

    (1978) 1 SCC 248.

  5. 5.

    (2017) 10 SCC 1.

  6. 6.

    See Hart 1963.

  7. 7.

    Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928).

  8. 8.

    Thomson 1975. For replies, see Rachels 1975, Scanlon 1975.

  9. 9.

    Chandrachud J, supra note 5 at Para 2.

  10. 10.

    Chandrachud J, supra note 5 at Para 29.

  11. 11.

    James 2013.

  12. 12.

    aristotle, politica, book i, in McKeon 2001. See Chaps. 3–13 for a discussion of the household, which is the description of the private sphere.

  13. 13.

    See Chandrachud J, supra note 5 at Para 140(d).

  14. 14.

    Chandrachud J, supra note 5 at Para 168 (emphasis supplied).

  15. 15.

    Ibid.

  16. 16.

    John Stuart Mill, On Liberty and Other Essays (Stefan Collini ed., 1989) (1859) Chs. III and IV.

  17. 17.

    Chandrachud J, supra note 5 at Para 169.

  18. 18.

    See Thomson, supra note 8.

  19. 19.

    See below the discussion of the cases in the USA.

  20. 20.

    Privacy, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2002), available at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/privacy/.

  21. 21.

    Chandrachud J, supra note 5 at Para 140(c).

  22. 22.

    Supra note 17.

  23. 23.

    Supra note 14.

  24. 24.

    The sceptic would of course be contested by those who argue that privacy is valuable because it protects our control over information about us which is material to how we want to represent ourselves in our social relationships. See Thomson, supra note 8; Marmor 2015.

  25. 25.

    See Part K of the opinion for a survey of US judicial decisions.

  26. 26.

    Chandrachud J, supra note 5 at Para 134(ii).

  27. 27.

    Ibid.

  28. 28.

    Ibid.

  29. 29.

    Wacks 2010.

  30. 30.

    Warren and Brandeis 1890.

  31. 31.

    277 U.S. 438 (1928).

  32. 32.

    Chandrachud J, supra note 5 at Para 158.

  33. 33.

    Post 2001.

  34. 34.

    389 U.S. 347 (1967).

  35. 35.

    Bhatia 2014.

  36. 36.

    Supra note 34 at 2B.

  37. 37.

    Levin and Nicholson 2005 (For the identical conclusion that privacy protection in the USA is a liberty protection).

  38. 38.

    United States v. Jones 565 U.S. 400 (2012) (For an argument based on intimacy); Kyllo v. United States 53 U.S. 27 (2001) (for an intimacy-based argument); Carey 2q2v. Population Services International 431 U.S. 678 (1977) (for an intimacy-based choice argument); Florida v. Jardines 569 U.S. 1 (2013) (for reliance on the idea of an expectation); the dissents in Minnesota v. Olson 495 U.S. 91 (1990) (for an expectation-based argument); Smith v. Maryland 442 U.S. 735 (1979) (expectation-based argument); State v. Miller 425 U.S. 435 (1976) (expectation-based argument).

  39. 39.

    381 U.S. 479 (1965).

  40. 40.

    Ibid., at 10.

  41. 41.

    See Henry 2011 (for an argument of how the varied use of dignity by US courts can be understood not in terms of an essential meaning of dignity through a pluralistic approach typified by Wittgenstein’s idea of family resemblances).

  42. 42.

    410 U.S. 113 (1973).

  43. 43.

    Ibid., at 152.

  44. 44.

    539 U.S. 558 (2003).

  45. 45.

    Ibid., at 1.

  46. 46.

    Supra note 44 at 13.

  47. 47.

    For a discussion of the nature of this connection in the decision, see Baruah 2009.

  48. 48.

    See Baruah 2014.

  49. 49.

    See McCrudden 2008.

  50. 50.

    Ibid. See Waldron (2013). Gallie 1955.

  51. 51.

    Supra note 49 at 722.

  52. 52.

    Dworkin 2010.

  53. 53.

    Supra note 41 at 177.

  54. 54.

    McCrudden, supra note 49 (for a discussion on the varied use of dignity); Rao 2008, Feldman 2000 (providing an analysis of the many ways in which dignity has been used in English law, yet expressing scepticism about its use); O’Mahony 2012, White 2012, Pinker 2008, Bagaric and Allan 2006, Macklin 2003, Brownsword 2003.

  55. 55.

    Pritam Baruah, Human Dignity in Indian Constitutional Adjudication (unpublished manuscript) (on file with authors).

  56. 56.

    Ibid.

  57. 57.

    Chandrachud J, supra note 5 at Para 96.

  58. 58.

    (1981) 1 SCC 608.

  59. 59.

    Baxi 2014).

  60. 60.

    Kamil 2017.

  61. 61.

    Chandrachud J, supra note 5 at Para 107.

  62. 62.

    Chandrachud J, supra note 5 at Para 3(E) [Conclusion]. Indeed such a link between dignity and privacy was proposed in some of the earliest scholarly debates on privacy. See Bloustein 1964.

  63. 63.

    Chandrachud J, supra note 5 at Para 169.

  64. 64.

    See Upper Caste Men Attack Dalit Groom for Riding Horse in Rajasthan, (The Wire, April 30, 2018), https://thewire.in/caste/upper-caste-men-attack-dalit-groom-for-riding-horse-in-rajasthan.

  65. 65.

    See Raz 1991 (for an argument for why the right is a public good).

  66. 66.

    In fact, one of the authors here holds the view that the courts must provide the best reasons available to them in any decision. See Pritam Baruah, supra note 48, Part III.

  67. 67.

    Chandrachud J, supra note 5 at Para 113.

  68. 68.

    Ibid.

  69. 69.

    See Raz 1988.

  70. 70.

    In Germany Article 13 specifically refers to the “inviolability of home”, while the South African Constitution expressly provides for the right to privacy in Section 14: “Everyone has the right to privacy, which includes the right not to have—(a) their person or home searched; (b) their property searched; (c) their possessions seized; or (d) the privacy of their communications infringed.”

  71. 71.

    Chandrachud J, supra note 5 at Para 168.

  72. 72.

    Microcensus 27 BVerfGE 1 (1969).

  73. 73.

    1996 (2) SA 751 (CC).

  74. 74.

    2001 (1) SA 545 (CC).

  75. 75.

    Ibid., at 18.

  76. 76.

    1999 (1) SA 6 (CC).

  77. 77.

    Ibid., at Para 116, quoting, Brennan 1988, quoting Cardozo 1928.

  78. 78.

    Whitman 2004.

  79. 79.

    For a discussion of such views and whether they are continuous with Kantian views, see Whitman 2003 at 243 (arguing that there is such a continuity); for a contrasting view, see Neuman 2003.

  80. 80.

    Waldron and Dan-Cohen 2012; see also Valentini 2017 (for a relational account).

  81. 81.

    Kommers 1997.

  82. 82.

    ERSA Case C-347/03 [2005] ECR I-3785.

  83. 83.

    McAllister 2004.

  84. 84.

    Uzun v. Germany, App no 35623/05, IHRL 1838 (ECHR 2010).

  85. 85.

    See also McCrudden, supra note 49 at 704–705. (for the view that dignity has often been another hurdle to cross for litigants in establishing rights violation).

  86. 86.

    See Whitman, On Nazi “Honour”, supra note 79. Also see, Riley 2010.

  87. 87.

    See Whitman, supra note 78.

  88. 88.

    Whitman, supra note 78 (for how European countries including Germany have restrained the press from disseminating information that did not appear to exhibit an expectation of privacy when the information was made available to others).

  89. 89.

    Manuel Wackenheim v. France Communication No 854/1999, U.N. Doc. CCPR/C/75/D/854/1999 (2002) (report of the UN Human Rights Committee).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jindal Global Law School, Sonipat, India

    Pritam Baruah

  2. Gujarat National Law University, Gandhinagar, India

    Zaid Deva

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Correspondence to Pritam Baruah .

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  1. Centre for Comparative Law, National Law University, Delhi, New Delhi, India

    Mahendra Pal Singh

  2. Centre for Comparative Law, National Law University, Delhi, New Delhi, India

    Niraj Kumar

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Baruah, P., Deva, Z. (2019). Justifying Privacy: The Indian Supreme Court’s Comparative Analysis. In: Singh, M., Kumar, N. (eds) The Indian Yearbook of Comparative Law 2018. The Indian Yearbook of Comparative Law. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7052-6_8

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