Jamie Grace is a Lecturer in Law in the School of Law and Criminology, in the Faculty of Business, Computing & Law, University of Derby. He is undertaking a PhD connected with data-protection and freedom-of-information in the public sector organisation; with specific reference to health and justice agencies; and the notion of privacy in the law of the UK. He is also working as an Information Officer in undertaking projects concerning data-protection and freedom-of-information compliance with colleagues across the University.

Abstract

Physical architectural models can be used to inspire legislative architectural models. The traditional architecture of the Arabic mashrabiyya can be seen as a model for potential universal privacy legislation that the UK is currently lacking – providing the substantive instrumental content for a move toward ‘constitutional privacy’ for better rights-observant electronic governance in health, social care and criminal justice.This paper will introduce in an overview the work of Kendall Thomas, Beate Rossler, Fadwa El Guindi, Nicola Moreham, Raymond Wacks, Daniel Solove and Roberto Lattanzi in delimiting conceptions of privacy before exploring how conflicting themes within the literature can be reconciled with a ‘mashrabiyya model’ for privacy.

It will be suggested that a ‘mashrabiyya model’ of constitutional privacy might help the courts and legislators better understand the multi-faceted complicity of Article 8 ECHR and the ‘right to a private and family life’; which strives to address, in the words of Moreham, ‘freedom from interference with physical and psychological integrity’, the collection and disclosure of information’, the ‘protection of one’s living environment’, and personal ‘identity’, as well as a concept of ‘autonomy’.

It is the rise of the practice of electronic governance that mandates that a better model for the exercise of privacy rights might be found.

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