SPECIAL COLLECTION OF THE CASE LAW ON FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION was based on real-life actor Gustaf Gründgens. In 1963, Gründgens’ adoptive son, Peter Gorski, brought proceedings against the publishing house Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, seeking to prevent the publication of Mephisto in West Germany. The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany considered that although artistic freedom is protected by the German Constitution, in this case, lower courts were right to invoke the right to dignity, as laid out in the Constitution, to protect the personality rights of Gründgens, thus upholding a ban on the publication of the novel. More info here. United States: In the case of Sidis v. F-R Pub. Corp. (1940), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that a magazine article about a once-famous prodigy did not violate his privacy. William James Sidis, who had gained fame as a child and teenager but pursued a more ordinary life as an adult, initiated the proceedings, alleging that The New Yorker magazine had unveiled details about his current life and thus violated his right to privacy. The Court reasoned that scrutiny about Sidis’s life could be of public concern, and was hence justified due to his earlier publicity. The Court also held that no illegal use of Sidis’s name, picture, and portrait for trade or advertisement purposes had occurred. More info here. ii. The duty to notify subjects before publishing articles concerning their private life The complaint had been ECtHR: In the case of Mosley v. The United Kingbrought by an individual who dom (2011), the Fourth Section of the ECtHR conhad recovered monetary cluded that the United Kingdom had not failed its positive obligations in relation to the right to privacy. The compensation from the complaint had been brought by an individual who had domestic courts for having recovered monetary compensation from the domestic had his privacy infringed by a courts for having had his privacy infringed by a newspaper article concerning sexual activities in which he newspaper article concerning had engaged in private. The complainant maintained sexual activities in which he that, in order to adequately protect privacy, the UK had engaged in private. had a duty to require publishers to notify subjects before the publishing of articles concerning their private life, in order to afford them the opportunity to request an injunction before publication. The Court reasoned that, in light of its potential “chilling effect” on freedom of expression, its questionable effectiveness and the wide margin of appreciation afforded to individual Members, States could not be said to have an obligation to impose such a pre-notification requirement. More info here. In the case of Peck v. The United Kingdom (2003), the European Court of Human Rights found that the United Kingdom violated the right to privacy, as enshrined in Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, of the applicant, when the Brentwood Borough Council disclosed footage, —to several media outlets— recorded by its CCTV system, of the applicant’s suicide attempt, in a public street, and its aftermath. For the ECtHR, the United Kingdom failed to take the necessary safeguards to protect the privacy of the applicant, such as masking the identity 28