公众人物隐私权理论之流变--基于《民法典》第998条的展开

The Evolution of the Doctrine of Privacy of Public Figures Based on Article 998 of the Civil Code

公众人物隐私权的克减性似乎毋庸置疑,但对于在实践中如何操作以及适用的人群,却存在相当大的不确定性。欧洲人权法院的重要判例表明,公众人物理论对权利的评估过程并未有所助益。现有论点无法证成限制公众人物的隐私权是合理的。因此,法院应在某种意义上放弃公众人物理论,将注意力聚焦于利益的衡量以及对权利的侵犯程度上。据此,应该以社会关联性、认知必要性和比例相称性三个要素为过滤条件的指导原则,在不同的场景中对隐私应享有的保护强度做细致分析。

The derogatory nature of the right to privacy of public figures seems unquestionable,but there is considerable uncertainty as to how to operate it in practice,and to whom it applies.Drawing on key jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights,the paper concludes that the public figure doctrine does not contribute to the process of assessing rights.The existing arguments do not justify limiting the right to privacy of public figures.Therefore,the Court should,in a sense,abandon the public figure doctrine and focus its attention on the weighing of interests and the degree of infringement of rights.Accordingly,this paper attempts to provide guiding principles by using the three elements of social relevance,cognitive necessity and proportionality as filters,with a view to providing a nuanced analysis of the intensity of protection that privacy should enjoy in different scenarios.