Privacy Law Commons^™

Defamation And The Right Of Privacy, John W. Wade, Dean

Vanderbilt Law Review

The history of the two torts of defamation and unwarranted invasion of the right of privacy has been greatly different. Defamation developed over a period of many centuries, with the twin torts of libel and slander having completely separate origins and historical growth. Professor Street summarizes this history by declaring that there was "a perversion of evolutionary processes," with the result that there was produced "a rather heterogeneous pile which should normally have gone to form a consistent body of legal doctrine, but which on the contrary, comprises many disconnected fragments moving in a confused way under the impulse of …