The decision of the nine-judge bench of the Supreme Court in Puttaswamy v Union of India, handed down in late August 2017, affirmed the existence of the fundamental right to privacy under the Constitution. This article examines some of the underlying themes and implications of the judgment: in particular, its affirmation of the individual as the basic normative unit of the Constitution, its elaboration of privacy in terms of bodily integrity, informational self-determination, and decisional autonomy, and the narrow framework within which the state may impose limitations upon it.
