The Corporate Privacy Proxy
38 Pages Posted: 15 Oct 2019
Date Written: October 3, 2019
Abstract
This Article contributes to the First Amendment corporate privacy debate by identifying the relevance of agriculture security legislation, or ag-gag laws. Ag-gag laws restrict methods used to gather and disseminate information about commercial food cultivation, production, and distribution and potentially create a “right” to control or privatize nonproprietary information about animal and agribusinesses. Yet, corporate privacy rights are unrecognized as a matter of U.S. constitutional law, which implicates the sufficiency of the justification for ag-gag laws. This Article ponders whether “security” acts as a proxy for an unrecognized right to corporate privacy in the ag-gag context. Part I of this Article surveys the ag-gag landscape. Part II of this Article describes the corporate privacy debate. Part III of this Article hypothesizes how ag-gag laws arguably expand corporate privacy for animal and agribusinesses to a degree that threatens the marketplace of ideas about the industry.
Keywords: First Amendment, corporate privacy, agriculture, legislation, undercover investigations
JEL Classification: K2, K30, K42, Q18
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation