Editorial Note

This issue of the Global Privacy Law Review brings together four contributions that, although diverse in subject matter and methodology, converge on a common theme: privacy as part of the basic architecture of legal order.From the historical roots of privacy in Roman law and early modern Europe, through contemporary debates on drone surveillance, to the interplay between competition, data protection and compliance in digital mergers, and the evolving role of pseudonymization and national data protection frameworks, the pieces collected here invite reflection on how law shapes and constrains power over information in a networked world.The opening article by Camilla Della Giustina and Pierdomenico de Gioia Carabellese, The Tort (or Scottish Delict) of Privacy from Thomas More's Utopia to the 'Tate Gallery' Case via Air Drones, offers a wide-ranging historical and comparative analysis of privacy in common law systems, with a particular focus on English and Scottish law. 1 Starting from Utopia and drawing on Roman law remedies such as the actio iniuriarum, the authors show that privacy is not a late-modern by-product of the digital age, but a construct deeply embedded in social practice, architecture and hierarchy.They trace how early Anglo-American doctrine, including Warren and Brandeis's classic formulation and the development of the New York statutory right of privacy, emerged in response to technological change, first the camera and later, as the article emphasizes, drones.A particular strength of the piece is its insistence on the spatial and physical dimensions of privacy, which have often been overshadowed by information-centred accounts.The authors carefully reconstruct the evolution of English law from Wainwright and Campbell through Vidal-Hall v. Google and Tchenguiz v. Imerman, showing how misuse of private information and data protection have functioned as de facto vehicles for privacy protection, even as courts have