미국 헌법상 정보 프라이버시권

The right to privacy was developed from the issues of illegal behaviors under the Common Law, but is guaranteed today as important fundamental right of individuals by the Constitution. In other words, the right to privacy was developed as the right under the tort law dealing with the infringement upon the privacy of human beings at first, but was expanded gradually to guarantee the privacy and autonomy under the Constitution against unfair infringement from the state power. However, the U.S. Supreme Court has not definitively recognized the existence of a constitutional right to informational privacy for controlling the information of self and is only assuming the right to informational privacy. The U.S. Supreme Court has made ruling on 3 cases in which the right to informational privacy was directly presented, but has not drawn clear conclusion on the recognizability of the right to informational privacy under the Constitution. In the most recent NASA v. Nelson case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling showed that the right to privacy was not infringed upon by the public employer's background check of employee based on the assumption of the right to informational privacy. This study examined whether the U.S. Supreme Court was reasonable in avoiding making clear recognition of the right to informational privacy as the right covered by the Constitution in cases ranging from the Whalen v. Roe case to the NASA v. Nelson case and whether the standard of review were applied properly in the ruling of case in which the right to informational privacy came to the fore as an issue. Through that, this study is intended to emphasize the constitutional protection of the right to informational privacy which has been given relatively inadequate protection despite its importance.