Recently I’ve read many comment pieces warning how difficult the burgeoning privacy law in this country will make journalism in the future. When you were creating the book list you said that it was difficult to give a definitive answer on this question because the law is expanding so quickly.

Yes, the problem is that only book that you might call accessible to the general reader – anybody who’s just interested in finding out what its all about – is Joshua Rosenberg’s book. The others are rather heavy and complex, either legal or academic tomes. The other difficulty is – a common problem with law books – someone may well come out with a decision tomorrow that promptly overrides it all. Privacy law is changing very rapidly in this country at the moment. There aren’t actually many cases, but every time there is there’s a new approach to it.

Sure. So how does English law deal with matters of privacy now?

Its not called privacy law as such, but rather ‘misuse of private information’. It’s all based on Article 8 of the European Conventional of Human Rights, as interpreted by the Court of Strasbourg.

And the problem for journalists is the trade-off with another human right, the freedom of expression.

The problem is the balance that is being struck by our courts and how it’s changing our laws. It is changing our law in a way that has not been considered by parliament.

Are there positives of having judge-made law, as opposed to statute? Isn’t it is more flexible?

Well you could argue that, judge-made law develops according to changing situations.

Say, for example, it used to be the law that a man could not be convicted of raping his wife. This dated back to lord-knows-when, 16th or 17th century, when the view was taken that by marrying the man she consented to sexual intercourse whenever he wanted. A rather peculiar view.

That decision was later overturned by the House of Lords who said: Well no, current social mores have changed and it’s quite possible for a woman to say no to her husband. So judge-made law is good in its way, but one of the reasons Parliament never introduced privacy law was the sheer difficulty with trying to define what is private.

The result is that the definition is being drawn up by judges as they go along and one of the big complaints is that a great deal of the law is being developed by a single judge.