(South African Constitutional Court) Application was made to have declared constitutionally invalid laws against homosexuality. Sachs J held: ‘ There is no good reason why the concept of privacy should, as was suggested, be restricted simply to sealing off from State control what happens in the bedroom, with the doleful subtext that you may behave as bizarrely and shamefully as you like, on the understanding that you do so in private. It has become a judicial cliche to say that privacy protects people, not places. Blackmun J in Bowers, Attorney General of Georgia v Hardwick et al 478 US 186 (1986) made it clear that the much quoted ‘right to be left alone’ should not be seen simply as a negative right to occupy a private space free from government intrusion, but as a right to get on with your life, express your personality and make fundamental decisions abut your intimate relationships without penalisation. Just as ‘liberty must be viewed not merely ‘negatively or selfishly as a mere absence of restraint but positively and socially as an adjustment of restraints to the end of freedom of opportunity”, so must privacy be regarded as suggesting at least some responsibility on the State to promote conditions in which personal self-realisation can take place.’
Judges:
Sachs J, Ackermann J
Citations:
1999 (1) SA 6, [1998] ZACC 15, 1998 (12) BCLR 1517
Links:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Pearce v Mayfield School CA 31-Jul-2001
The claimant teacher was a lesbian. She complained that her school in failed to protect her against abuse from pupils for her lesbianism. She appealed against a decision that the acts of the pupils did not amount to discrimination, and that the . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Human Rights, Constitutional
Updated: 31 January 2022; Ref: scu.375070