CU Boulder Jewish Studies - Jewish Messianic Heresy and the Right to Privacy 

Presented by Professor Nan Goodman "Jewish Messianic Heresy and the Right to Privacy: Louis Brandeis and the Sabbatian Origins of an American Legal Doctrine"
We all know that American law protects our privacy within the home, but does it protect our emotions and personalities? Professor Nan Goodman will recover the little-known Jewish origins of the attempt by Justice Louis Brandeis to reinvent privacy law to provide just that type of protection.
The first Jewish justice on the United States Supreme Court, Brandeis was profoundly shaped by his mother’s stories about growing up in Europe among modern-day followers of Sabbatai Zevi, the seventeenth-century failed messiah whose exploits rocked the Jewish world. Inspired by the lessons that his mother drew from these heretical Sabbatians, Brandeis had strong personal as well as intellectual reasons for seeking to bring human emotions and personalities within the ambit of privacy law.