The issues of the public figures’ right to privacy

SUMMARY The present paper analyses the limits of public persons’ rights to their private life, the contents and peculiarities of such rights, the problematics of the concept of a public person. The practice of Lithuanian Courts and European Court of Human Rights, which constitutes the grounds for the opportunities of a public person to defend his privacy, has been considered. Lithuanian Courts defending the right to privacy of a public person still evaluate differently the status of such person and his privacy limits. The European Court of Human Rights has formed a provision in its practice that the criticism of public persons has wider limits than the one in respect of a private person. Such wider criticism is based on the society’s need to know about the private life of state officials, persons, whose permanent activities make influence on public issues. Such need shall be legal and legitimate; the information being published shall be relevant, necessary to know. The privacy of public persons may be limited, whereas such possibility is clearly and unambiguously formed by laws; when such limiting is unavoidable striving to: protect national security, public order or the interests of economical welfare of the state, the rights and liberties of other people, to prevent violations of law and criminal offences. The possibilities of such limitation have been foreseen not only by Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, but also by the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania. In the event of publishing of any data about public persons’ private life in media and upon arise of a dispute, courts seek for reasonable balance between the right to private life and the right of self-expression. One of the most important criteria to preference is a public interest versus a wish to satisfy curiosity. Analysing the practice of courts, we can come to the conclusion that despite the influence of a public person on society, he retains his right to privacy. Information about him may not be collected and published in whatever way or whatever information of private nature may not be published. In the paper, the judicial and extrajudicial methods of defence of the right to private life are considered; the empiric investigation of the first pages of two national dailies in the selected period of time was performed. It is presented in the Annex to the present paper