On Legal Limitation Of The Public Person's Right To Privacy

The public person, as a special group of the society, whose privacy will unavoidly conflict with the right of public opinion's supervision and the right to know. In order to make sure of the realization of the right of public opinion's supervision and the right to know, it is necessary to limit the privacy of public person in the modern countries ruled by laws. U.S.A was the first country that raised the concept of "public person", and it established the principle of the limitation to the privacy of public person with many precedents. However, the theoretical research on the restriction to the right of public person started not long ago and there is no law on it in China. So the research on the legal limitation to the privacy of public person are both theoretical and practical significant.At present, there are such theories on the limitation to the privacy of public person as "the public reasonable interest theory", "the news value theory" and " the benefits measures analysis theory", all of which make theoretical demonstration on the limitation to the privacy of public person. However, all of theories just study the limitation to the privacy of public person from certain aspect, which is quite inaccurate. The author holds that the inherent foundations of limiting the privacy of public person are the restriction to the social contact, the need of public interest and social value orientation. On the foundation of this, the author draws out the basic structure of the system of legal limitation to the privacy of public person basing on the analysis of the situation and defects of legal limitation of the privacy of public person.