Antonin Scalia, Law Schools, SCOTUS, Supreme Court

Update: Fordham's Dossier on Justice Scalia

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For those of you just tuning in, we have a little bit of a back and forth going on between Fordham Law School and One First Street. Last week, we wrote about What Fordham Knows About Justice Scalia. Professor Joel Reidenberg, an information privacy law professor at Fordham, had his class compile a 15-page dossier on Justice Antonin Scalia after the Justice was quoted in January saying, “Every single datum about my life is private? That’s silly.”

Dan Solove expounds on Scalia’s privacy views at Concurring Opinions:

[Scalia] believes that certain kinds of information are not private — Internet tracking, most items of consumption (unless embarrassing), addresses, and so on. He partly seems to endorse the view that there’s no privacy violation if there’s “nothing to hide.”

We checked in with Justice Scalia to see how he felt about Professor Reidenberg acting on his professed privacy beliefs. He was not pleased:

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.

Professor Reidenberg responds to Justice Scalia’s response, after the jump.


Prof. Reidenberg still won’t tell us exactly what’s in that dossier, beyond a home address, the value of Scalia’s home, his home phone number, the movies he likes, his food preferences, his wife’s personal e-mail address, and “photos of his lovely grandchildren.” Dan Solove writes that Prof. Reidenberg actually sent notice of the dossier to One First Street when he realized it would be reported on Above The Law:

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Reidenberg had sent a letter informing Justice Scalia about the dossier and offering to allow him to see it if he desired. The dossier was not made public.

We sent Professor Reidenberg Justice Scalia’s response. Here’s what the professor had to say:

I’m surprised by Justice Scalia’s characterization of the project. The scope of protection for privacy in our society is at the forefront of the public policy debate. I assign this research project annually and last year used myself as its subject. The exercise never fails to provide a keen demonstration for my students of the privacy issues associated with aggregating discrete bits of otherwise innocuous personal information.

When there are so few privacy protections for secondary use of personal information, that information can be used in many troubling ways. A class assignment that illustrates this point is not one of them. Indeed, the very fact that Justice Scalia found it objectionable and felt compelled to comment underscores the value and legitimacy of the exercise.

If the mission was to get under the skin of a SCOTUS Justice, mission accomplished. If the mission was to change the way adjudicators and lawmakers address privacy concerns and rights… well, we’ll see what happens. And if there are any Fordham students who plan to apply for clerkships with Justice Scalia down the road, we think you may not want to mention having taken Professor Reidenberg’s class.

Earlier: Justice Scalia Responds to Fordham Privacy Invasion!

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What Fordham Knows About Justice Scalia

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