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10-1016 Wolfe v. Schaefer

By: dmc-admin//August 31, 2010//

10-1016 Wolfe v. Schaefer

By: dmc-admin//August 31, 2010//

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Constitutional Law
First Amendment

A candidate for public office cannot sue his opponent for disclosing that he is under criminal investigation.

“The rejection in Paul v. Davis of a liberty or property interest in reputation casts doubt on the propriety of basing a federal constitutional right to informational privacy on a state’s decision to recognize such privacy as a species of liberty or property. Paul illustrates the modern Supreme Court’s expansive view of freedom of speech and of the press, a view that casts doubt on any effort to limit the public disclosure of personal information, however private. But the Court has not yet completely extinguished state-law protections, whether common law or statutory, against publication of intimate details of people’s private lives in which other people might be interested. Amy Gajda, ‘Judging Journalism: The Turn Toward Privacy and Judicial Regulation of the Press,’ 97 Cal. L. Rev. 1039 (2009). True, not extinguishing a private right is not the same thing as elevating it to a constitutional right. Yet there is an air of paradox in giving constitutional protection in the name of privacy to conduct that stretches the ordinary understanding of the concept of privacy, yet denying it to intensely private information, which is at the concept’s core. Maybe the Supreme Court will clarify the issue in Nelson v. NASA, in which, as we noted, it recently granted certiorari.”

Affirmed.

10-1016 Wolfe v. Schaefer

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois, Scott, J., Posner, J.

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