Lynskey, Orla --- "Courts, privacy and data protection in the UK: Why two wrongs don’t make a right" [2017] ELECD 682; in Brkan, Maja; Psychogiopoulou, Evangelia (eds), "Courts, Privacy and Data Protection in the Digital Environment" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017) 215

Book Title: Courts, Privacy and Data Protection in the Digital Environment

Editor(s): Brkan, Maja; Psychogiopoulou, Evangelia

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781784718701

Section: Chapter 12

Section Title: Courts, privacy and data protection in the UK: Why two wrongs don’t make a right

Author(s): Lynskey, Orla

Number of pages: 22

Abstract/Description:

This chapter examines the reluctant recognition of the rights to privacy and data protection in the UK legal order. It suggests that the UK legal order has traditionally recognised ‘wrongs’, in equity and in tort, rather than ‘rights’. Nevertheless, it demonstrates that the incorporation of the ECHR in the domestic legal order through the Human Rights Act 1998 and the binding force of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights have been instrumental in infusing the jurisprudence of British courts with rights-based language and reasoning. It acknowledges, however, that defamation law has bucked this trend by rebalancing freedom of expression and privacy in favour of the former. Keywords: equity, tort, misuse of private information, defamation, EU Charter, primacy.