PART P
The Constitution recognises the right simply because it is an incident of a fundamental freedom or liberty which the draftsperson considered to be so significant as to require constitutional protection. Once privacy is held to be an incident of the protection of life, personal liberty and of the liberties guaranteed by the provisions of Part III of the Constitution, the submission that privacy is only a right at common law misses the wood for the trees. The central theme is that privacy is an intrinsic part of life, personal liberty and of the freedoms guaranteed by Part III which entitles it to protection as a core of constitutional doctrine. The protection of privacy by the Constitution liberates it, as it were, from the uncertainties of statutory law which, as we have noted, is subject to the range of legislative annulments open to a majoritarian government.
Any
abridgment must meet the requirements prescribed by Article 21, Article 19 or the relevant freedom. The Constitutional right is placed at a pedestal which embodies both a negative and a positive freedom. The negative freedom protects the individual from unwanted intrusion. As a positive freedom, it obliges the State to adopt suitable measures for protecting individual privacy. An apt description of this facet is contained in the Max Planck Encyclopaedia of Comparative Constitutional Law, in its section on the right to privacy352 : “2. The right to privacy can be both negatively and positively defined. The negative right to privacy entails the individuals are protected from unwanted intrusion by both the state and private actors into their private life, especially features that define their personal identity such as sexuality, religion and political affiliation, ie the inner core of a person’s private life….
Anna Jonsson Cornell, “Right to Privacy”, Max Planck Encyclopaedia of Comparative Constitutional Law (2015) 352
222