Americans have long been obsessed with their images-their looks, public personas, and the impressions they make. This preoccupation has left its mark on the law. The twentieth century saw the creation of laws that protect your right to control your public image, to defend your image, and to feel good about your image and public presentation of self. These include the legal actions against invasion of privacy, libel, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. With these laws came the phenomenon of "personal image litigation"-individuals suing to vindicate their image rights.

Laws of Image tells the story of how Americans came to use the law to protect and manage their images, feelings, and reputations. In this social, cultural, and legal history, Samantha Barbas ties the development of personal image law to the self-consciousness and image-consciousness that has become endemic in our media-saturated culture of celebrity and consumerism, where people see their identities as intertwined with their public images. The laws of image are the expression of a people who have become so publicity-conscious and self-focused that they believe they have a right to control their images-to manage and spin them like actors, politicians, and rock stars.

Auteur

Samantha Barbas is Associate Professor of Law at SUNY Buffalo Law School. She is the author of two previous books: Movie Crazy: Fans, Stars, and the Cult of Celebrity (2001) and The First Lady of Hollywood: A Biography of Louella Parsons (2005).

Contenu

Contents and Abstracts1Image and Reputation chapter abstractThe late 19th century saw the rise of the sensationalistic popular press in the United States, and with it, the expansion of libel law and litigation. In increasing number, both famous and ordinary people were bringing suit against the press over false, defamatory, unflattering depictions. Once seen as something to be negotiated through social interactions, in the rough and tumble of everyday life, reputations and public images were becoming legal entities, to be controlled and maintained through the use of law and legal institutions. 2The Right to Privacy chapter abstract "The Right to Privacy" by Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis, published in the Harvard Law Review in 1890 and dubbed the "most famous law review article of all time," established the practical and theoretical foundations of the tort action for invasion of privacy. The privacy action permitted people to sue over the mental anguish that ensued when they were depicted before the public in an embarrassing or unfavorable manner, even though the material was not necessarily false or defamatory. Like the surge in libel litigation, the development of the right to privacy was a response to the rise of the popular press. It also reflected a new sensitivity to public image that emerged from the demands of social life in a urban, commercial, mass-mediated society, where appearances, first impressions, and superficial images were becoming important foundations of social evaluation and judgment. 3The Crisis of the Circulating Portrait chapter abstract Despite its invention as a remedy for the victims of sensationalistic journalism, the tort of invasion of privacy was rarely used in that context in its early years. The right to privacy took off in a different kind of violation of the right to one's image. At the turn of the 20th century, the right to privacy was mobilized in cases where people were upset about having their visual likenesses presented to the public in a displeasing manner. In particular, individuals whose photographs had been used in advertisements without consent brought suits for invasion of privacy. At a time when advertising was seen as disreputable, these acts of image appropriation were regarded as truly offensive. The right to privacy was the right to recover for the anguish caused by this particular form of identity theft - having one's picture used, without authorization, in an embarrassing and undignified commercial context. 4Insult and Image chapter abstract The emerging mass media were not the only threats to personal image in turn of the century urban America. Commercial institutions such as railroads, department stores, and theatres were also posing threats to people's reputations, public images, and social identities. In an era before courtesy was standard in service occupations, patrons suffered acts of shaming and public humiliation by train conductors, theater ushers, and other commercial personnel. By the early twentieth century, courts had devised a tort action that would permit people to recover damages for emotional distress caused by these sorts of insults. This law of 'institutional insult,' the forerunner of the modern tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress, was an important component of the developing laws of image. Like the right to privacy, it was a right to legal redress for injuries to one's public image and one's feelings about one's image. 5The Image Society chapter abstract In the first decades of the twentieth century, the United States became an image society. In an emerging culture of celebrity and consumption, a nation where the mass media, especially visual media, were exerting a powerful hold over the popular consciousness, Americans were envisioning themselves and their social identities as images, entangled with, if not congruent with, the impressions they made in the eyes of others. The self inhered in the image: who one was was how one appeared before others, and that appearance was fluid and malleable. The self lived on the surface and was continuously regenerated through managed acts of self-performance and self-display. The actor became the modal self, and the act of managing and perfecting one's image was freighted with tremendous emotional and psychological weight. 6The Laws of Image chapter abstract As the image-conscious sensibility gained purchase on the popular imagination, and the mass media proliferated, existing areas of law were expanded and new laws created to protect people's interests in their public images. In the 1930s and 40s, a majority of states recognized the tort right to privacy, described as a right to avoid undesirable and "unwarranted publicity." Libel claims increased, and courts were extending libel law to address a broad range of harms to people's emotions, reputations, and public personas. A new tort action remedied serious, intentionally inflicted injuries to people's feelings, including their feelings about their images. In a number of different contexts, courts were recognizing a right to manage and control aspects of one's public image, and the personal image lawsuit became a fixture of American legal culture. 7The Freedom to Image chapter abstract Before World War I, William James Sidis was a famous child prodigy. As an adult, Sidis neglected his talents and retreated from public life. At 39, he was an adding-machine operator living alone in a shabby rooming house. The New Yorker wrote up his story in the magazine in 1937. Humiliated, Sidis sued for invasion of privacy. This chapter tells the story of the 1940 case Sidis v. F.R. Publishing, a milestone in the history of personal image law. Sidis was the first decision from a high federal court to imply that the right to privacy could be limited in the interest of freedom of speech. Sidis suggested that the right of the individual to control and express his own public image impinged on a more important right: the right of publishers to make and circulate images of people, and the right of the public to consume those images. 8An Age of Images chapter abstract By the 1950s, the laws of image were firmly established in American law and legal culture. Both the famous and the unknown were asserting a sense of entitlement to their images and mobilizing the law to defend themselves against unwanted publicity and perceived distortions of the…