PBS Newshour 3/1/2011
Excerpts from transcript
JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): Now, let's talk about the other decision today. This was over whether corporations have a right of personal privacy. This was the AT&T case. What was at issue and what was decided?
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MARCIA COYLE, "The National Law Journal": Well, Chief -- first of all, Chief Justice Roberts wrote the opinion.
And, in his sometimes humorous analysis, he said that personal -- he rejected AT&T's argument that personal, because it has the root word person, and the Freedom of Information Act defines person to include corporations, that that means corporations have personal privacy rights.
He said that, while adjectives typically modify their root nouns, that's not always the case. For example, crabbed mean -- could mean handwriting that you can't read, but it really -- crab is a crustacean or a type of apple, and corny has nothing to do with corn.
So, he said when we talk in common language about personal privacy, personal correspondence, personal interest, personal influence, we're really not talking about corporations. We're talking about human beings.
And personal privacy, he said, evokes human concerns, not entities' concerns like AT&T. And he had a kicker to his decision, sort of clever.
(LAUGHTER)
MARCIA COYLE: But think about it closely. He said, we trust that AT&T will not take it personally, meaning the decision.
(LAUGHTER)
Strike one FOR personal (human) freedom.
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