Law Students Teach Scalia About Privacy and the Web

This spring, the students of an elective course on Internet privacy at Fordham Law School experienced a number of fascinating "teaching moments" during an assignment meant to demonstrate how much personal information is floating around online. The assignment from the class's professor, Joel R. Reidenberg, was, admittedly, a bit provocative: create a dossier about Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia from what can be found on the Internet. Why Justice Scalia? Well, the class had been discussing his recent dismissive comments about Internet privacy concerns at a conference. His summation, as reported by The Associated Press: "Every single datum about my life is private? That's silly." The class managed to create a dossier of 15 pages, Professor Reidenberg reported to a conference on privacy at Fordham, that included the justice's home address and home phone number, his wife's personal e-mail address and the TV shows and food he prefers. Justice Scalia responds: "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."