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Twenty-First Century Pillow-Talk: Applicability Of The Marital Communications Privilege To Electronic Mail, Mikah K. Thompson

Faculty Works

The marital privilege has two parts: the testimonial privilege and the communications privilege. Originally, the testimonial privilege prevented one spouse from testifying against another. According to the United States Supreme Court, spousal disqualification sprang from two canons of medieval jurisprudence: first, the rule that an accused was not permitted to testify in his own behalf because of his interest in the proceeding; second, the concept that husband and wife were one, and that since the woman had no recognized separate legal existence, the husband was that one. Thus, if a husband were not permitted to testify, then his wife, as …