Justice Scalia Responds to Fordham Privacy Invasion!

[meegbear]

Last week, we wrote about the Fordham law professor who assigned his information privacy law class to compile a dossier on Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

The professor had chosen Scalia as the target for privacy invasion because of the Justice's remarks at a January conference organized by the Institute of American and Talmudic Law. Scalia's views on the privacy of personal information online are summed up nicely by this quote:

"Every single datum about my life is private? That's silly," Scalia (said).

(And his views are summed up at greater length here by privacy expert and GW Law Professor Dan Solove.)

Professor Joel Reidenberg and his class now have a 15-page dossier on Scalia, including his home address, the value of his home, his home phone number, the movies he likes, his food preferences, his wife's personal e-mail address, and "photos of his lovely grandchildren."

We checked in with the Justice to see how he felt about his online information being aggregated and mined by the professor and his 15 students.

Scalia was far from pleased (though we were pleased that a Supreme Court Justice would honor Above The Law with a response). Check out his reply to us, after the jump.

Here is Justice Scalia's response, in all its scathing glory:

I stand by my remark at the Institute of American and Talmudic Law conference that it is silly to think that every single datum about my life is private. I was referring, of course, to whether every single datum about my life deserves privacy protection in law.

It is not a rare phenomenon that what is legal may also be quite irresponsible. That appears in the First Amendment context all the time. What can be said often should not be said. Prof. Reidenberg's exercise is an example of perfectly legal, abominably poor judgment. Since he was not teaching a course in judgment, I presume he felt no responsibility to display any.

Reidenberg may have terrible judgment, but it's fairly impressive he managed to get bench-slapped by One First Street from a classroom at Fordham Law School.

http://abovethelaw.com/2009/04/justice_scalia_responds_to_for.php

[gratuitous]

1. Gee, Justice Scalia . . .

You must have run out of room to stop short of explaining why Professor Reidenberg's judgment is "abominably poor." I don't suppose you or your colleagues would accept a brief that made such an assertion without substantiation. What makes Professor Reidenberg's judgment "abominably poor"? Is it the subject of his exercise? The exercise itself? Based on your remarks about the silliness of any expectation of privacy in one's personal life, you can hardly be heard now to object when someone takes you at your literal word, so that can't be the basis for your opinon that Professor Reidenberg's judgment is "abominably poor." While I agree with your assertion that "what can be said often should not be said," you demonstrate an appalling lack of self-awareness in making that assertion after your own irresponsible remarks.

If you were a student in my class, Justice Scalia, I'm afraid your effort wouldn't quite rise to "D" level. Which is to say, you'd be failing.

[ensho]

2. kick

nt

[ixion]

3. Politicians and corporate executives are all above the law

the rest of us can be subject to all sorts of unconstitutional crap because of folks like Scalia, but every single one of them expresses outrage at the things they deem acceptable We, the People. :grr:

[Spazito]

4. Gee, Tony, looks like ' you reap what you sow' comes true....

yet again! Ain't that a shame.

:rofl:

[JDPriestly]

5. I'll bet every major corporation in the U.S. knows the minutest

detail about the Scalia family's life including exactly what they buy and how many times a year. His credit card company keeps all that information. Does he really think he has any privacy left in this world? Poor naive guy.

[pleah]

6. K&R

[beac]

7. "What can be said often should not be said" pretty much sums up every word out of Scalia's

vile mouth.

As for irresponsible, see Bush v. Gore.

[meegbear]

8. Hear hear!