The home is about more than property

July 2018 • 10 min.
Related note

Property, the home, and Carpenter v. United States
Related article

Benefits of viewing the right to privacy as a property right
Related article

Prohibition and the domestic home
Related article

Surveillance and Sodomy in 1918 Sacramento

Latest

Articles

The home is about more than property


In American law, the home is a sacred space. This sanctity is deeply connected to old the English common law and the high value placed on private property—but the special nature of the home in the United States goes further than mere property rights.

  • Property, the home, and Carpenter v. United States
  • Benefits of viewing the right to privacy as a property right
    •

    Democracy and the privacy of communications (1967)


    In 1967, President Johnson’s Crime Commission investigated electronic surveillance and concluded that the state of the law was “intolerable.”

  • Orin Kerr: trespass was never the exclusive Fourth Amendment test (2012)
  • Property, the home, and Carpenter v. United States
    •

    Morton Horwitz on the public-private distinction (1982)


    Legal historian Morton Horwitz wrote, “The distinction between public and private realms arose out of a double movement in modern political and legal thought.” He concluded that the distinction was breaking down as “private institutions were acquiring coercive power that had formerly been reserved to governments.”

  • Salus populi suprema lex: law and public health
  • Freedom to contract at the end of the nineteenth century
    •

    “Women and Pockets” (1885)


    “The straights to which helpless woman has been subjected by the absence of pockets in her gowns have wrung from her many complaints that have availed her nothing.”

  • Thinking about theories of historiography
  • The archive and the state
    •

    The telegraph and the domestic home


    “American District Telegraph Company was originally conceptualized as a business service, but it quickly began to sell itself as a service for the home as well.”

  • The “third-party problem”: one reason telegrams were not constitutionally protected
  • The telegraph and business invasions of privacy
    •

    Locke: “where there is no law, there is no freedom”


    In 1689, John Locke wrote that “the end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.”

  • Privacy, autonomy, and birth control in America, 1860-1900
  • Women, public health, and the police power
    •

    More articles →

    Popular