The Right to Privacy: A Doctrinal and Comparative Analysis by Hilary Delany & Eoin Carolan

• Date: 01 January 2008
• Author: Review By John O'Dowd, School Of Law, UCD

THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY: A DOCTRINAL AND

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

HILARY DELANY AND EOIN CAROLAN

Thomson Round Hall, 2008, xxxviii and 352pp. (hbk €180.00)

(with a contribution on French privacy law by

Cliodhna Murphy 171–189)

ISBN 978–1–85800–508–9

John O’Dowd

Dr Delany and Dr Carolan’s work is a significant contribution not just to

the study of, and public debate about, the law of privacy in Ireland, but on

an international scale. Any work, such as t his one, which examines this

topic in Irish law, from a comparative perspective has the potential to be of

significance outside Ireland for several reasons. The most notable is Ireland’s

unusual position as a jurisdiction in which the long-recognised horizontal

effect of constitutional rights (including an unenumerated con stitutional

right to privacy) has to be grafted on to the common law. It is the authors’

great achievement that its value to readers inside Ireland and beyond flows

not just from these intrinsic aspects of the to pic, but from th eir extremely

perceptive and clear analysis of the nature of the interests which privacy law

should protect, which is as relevant and should be as influential in any other

democratic legal system as it is in Ireland. It is the nature of a work on such

a relatively novel topic that it is in some respects rapidly overtaken by

events, but a comparison of developments in the year since the publication

of this book only confirms the value of the authors’ insights and analysis.

The focus of the book is on privacy as a fundamental rig ht, in the first

instance as an aspect of Irish constitutional law, but also in a comparative

framework. The bedrock of the study is Chapter 1 (pp 1–32), a conceptual

analysis of privacy a nd forms of protection which t he law may accord i t.

Because of the centra l importanc e of that element of the book it deserves

separate attention; the other chapters may be summarised as follows:

protection of privacy under the Constitution of Ireland (Ch 2, pp 3 3–91);

a comparative review of privacy torts in the USA, Canada, Australia, New

Zealand, England and Wales (Ch 3, pp 92–136); an analysis of the Privacy

Bill (also Ch 3); th e manner in which pr ivacy (A rticle 8 ) and freedom of

expression (Art 10) are balanced under the European Convention on

Human Rights (Article 10) (Ch 4, pp 137–170) ; the protection of privacy

in French law, German law, through the English and Irish law on breach of

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