This article undertakes analysis of misuse of private information (MPI) case law informed by deconstruction and wider literary and critical theory. It specifically considers the operation of the 'balance' metaphor in MPI case law: What rhetorical effects might it foster, and how? What insights can the balance metaphor in MPI case law reveal about the nature of legal discourse more generally? This article starts by providing an account of select theorists who explore the subtle but vital role that metaphor plays in non-literary texts. Though metaphors have traditionally been viewed as poetic or literary devices, deconstruction indicates that they often exert a hidden influence in the texts of other disciplines such as philosophy and law, with inevitable implications for claims based on truth, objectivity and reason. This account ultimately highlights the fundamental-but often overlooked-role of metaphor in legal discourse. Following this discussion, the article proceeds to investigate the key 'balance' metaphor in misuse of private information judgments. It identifies and analyses two distinct ways in which the balance metaphor subtly benefits and supports judicial reasoning in these judgments. First, it creates an impression of certainty by drawing on connotations of the quantifiable and calculable. Second, it fosters the moral appeal of a decision by alluding to notions of justice and equilibrium. In doing so, the balance metaphor marginalises the non-rational, inexpressible, even mysterious, aspects of judicial rights balancing. "In Demonstration, in Councell, and all rigorous search of Truth, Judgement does all; … But for Metaphors, they are in this case utterly excluded. For seeing they openly professe deceipt; to admit them into Councell, or Reasoning, were manifest folly." T Hobbes, Leviathan, Ch 8 (1651) "What then is truth? a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthromorphisms, in short, a sum of human relations which were poetically and rhetorically heightened, transferred, and adorned, and after long use seem solid, canonical, and binding to a nation. Truths are illusions about which it has been forgotten that they are illusions, worn-out metaphors without sensory impact, coins which have lost their image and now can be used only as metal, and no longer as coins." F Nietzsche, 'On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense' (1873)