Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 15.pdf/545

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The Green Bag.

The right of privacy has so far, in every reported case, been protected by the equity remedy of injunction to restrain a violation thereof. Where, however, the right has been violated and there has been no opportunity to prevent it, there must be a remedy. Every wrong must be punished. An invasion of a right of privacy would necessarily be a wrong to be legally vindicated and measured in damages. In many cases, the injury might not be tangible, as being to the feelings of the one whose rights of privacy have been invaded. Hence, it is to be expected that the damages would be small. In fact, it is altogether probable that courts would re strict recovery to nominal damages unless special damage could be proven. With relief by injunction, when the right of privacy is threatened, and nominal dam ages when it has been invaded, should not

this right of privacy become so established as to protect every private and personal rela tion of the individual? Would not such a condition be an education toward respect for each other and hence self-respect? Would it not be a wholesome curb to publicity? Would it not give a new meaning to our boasted liberties, by opening, enlarging and guarding a sphere where individuality might grow and mature, conscious of a right to be let alone? If individuality is entitled to pri vacy as a right, then it is a duty resting upnn each one of us to see that it is given. The recent Libel Act of Pennsylvania will not, however, help to define any such right of privacy. It is restrictive in its terms and as such only worthy of condemnation. It is no bill of right. New liberties or new ex pressions of same can only come from en larging declarations of government.

A LEGAL STUDY OF SAINT AUGUSTINE. THE SAXON. BY JOSEPH M. SULLIVAN. THE origin and historical development of sequence thereof the Christian religion made rapid progress. the early English law is a subject well calculated to arrest and rivet the attention of From the conversion of Ethelbert by Saint Augustine we can trace the first collection the thoughtful student. In the early days of Christianity the learned fathers of the church and preservation of Saxon laws into writing, exercised a vigilant watch over the legal af and the origin of English jurisprudence. This fairs of mankind. Saint Augustine was se collection of Ethelbert 's laws occurred about lected by Pope Gregory the Great to convert the beginning of the seventh century, and the native Britons to the Christian religion, was a collection of the most meagre scraps. and this noble saint, with several other After that time collections of laws continued monks, arrived in the province of Kent in to be made occasionally in Kent, and the the year A. D. 597, and immediately com various little kingdoms into which England menced their noble work among a strange was then divided; but none of them reached respectable dimensions until the time of and hostile people. King Ethelbert was readily convinced by their logic, and he im Alfred the Great, toward the end of the ninth mediately embraced the Christian religion. century. The baptism and conversion of King Ethel Alfred's collection is the only one the Eng bert by Saint Augustine had a wholesome lish nation can show of any value. None of effect upon the common people, and in con the originals of the early works relating to