Individual and Group Privacy

Edward J. Bloustein was the president of Rutgers University, and a distinguished scholar of the law. The four essays on privacy that comprise this book were completed over a thirteen-year period, and the development of the author's thinking parallels increasing thoughtful concern about privacy in the larger society. This development is especially appropriate to discussions of privacy and the "right to know" in the current era. The author analyzes individual and group privacy as legal concepts and examines the relationship of each to the legal right of the public to be informed about, and of a publisher to publish, private or confidential information.

In exploring a series of problems associated with privacy and the First Amendment, Bloustein defines individual and group privacy, distinguishing them from each other and related concepts. He also identifies the public interest in individual privacy as individual integrity or liberty, and that of group privacy as the integrity of social structure. The legal protection afforded each of these forms of privacy is illustrated at length, as is the clash between them and the constitutional guarantees of the First Amendment and the citizen's general right to know. In his final essay, Bloustein insists that the concept of group privacy is essential to a properly functioning social structure, and warns that it would be disastrous if this principle were neglected as part of an overreaction to the misuse of group confidences that characterized the Nixon era.

The new opening by Nathaniel Pallone provides a fresh context for evaluating the intellectual as well as organizational contribution of Bloustein.

"A notable contribution to the emerging law of privacy Bloustein has not only developed a unified theory of privacy but he has gone far to relate it to the First Amendment right to freedom of expression and to other features of our constitutional structure."-Thomas Emerson, Yale Law School

Edward J. Bloustein (1925-1989) was president of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey from 1971 until his death in 1989, where he also served as professor of law and philosophy. Bloustein was also a professor of law at New York University.

Nathaniel J. Pallone, who served in the Bloustein administration, is University Distinguished Professor (Psychology), Center for Alcohol Studies, at Rutgers-The State University of New Jersey. He is the author of Criminal Behavior as well as a number of other books in the area of criminology, many of them published by Transaction.