Griswold v. Connecticut

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Griswold v. Connecticut, (381 U.S. 479, 85 S.Ct. 1678, 14 L.Ed.2d 510)* (1965) is a landmark Supreme Court case in American law. It invalidated a law against the use of contraception. It formally established the legal concept of rights that citizens have to privacy: in particular, a sphere of privacy upon which the government may not intrude. This right is based on the Ninth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Contents 1 History 2 Supreme Court ruling 3 Dissents 4 Implications 5 External links 5.1 References

History

To do: history of the Connecticut legislation and lower-level court cases.

Supreme Court ruling

Justices William O. Douglas, Arthur J. Goldberg, Earl Warren, William J. Brennan, John Marshall Harlan II, and Byron Raymond White voted to reverse the lower court decisions and rule in favour of Griswold; however, the court was somewhat fragmented over the reasons for such a decision - 4 different opinions were written in favour of the judgement (with 2 dissents, for which see below).

Douglas wrote the official opinion of the court, but was not joined by anyone else.

Goldberg's opinion was joined by Warren and Brennan, and focused on the Ninth Amendment, which states that the rights laid out in the constitution are not the only rights retained by the people - in other words, the people retain certain other natural rights. Justice Goldberg wrote:

Since 1791 [the Ninth Amendment] has been a basic part of the Constitution which we are sworn to uphold. To hold that a right so basic and fundamental and so deep-rooted in our society as the right of privacy in marriage may be infringed because that right is not guaranteed in so many words by the first eight amendments to the Constitution is to ignore the Ninth Amendment and to give it no effect whatsoever.

Harlan and White wrote opinions based on the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Dissents

Dissenting were Justices Potter Stewart and Hugo Black.

Stewart wrote:

The Ninth Amendment ... [was intended] to make clear that the adoption of the Bill of Rights did not alter the plan that the Federal Government was to be a government of express and limited powers, and that all rights and powers not delegated to it were retained by the people and the individual States. Until today no member of this Court has ever suggested that the Ninth Amendment meant anything else.

Black wrote:

The Court talks about a constitutional "right of privacy" as though there is some constitutional provision or provisions forbidding any law ever to be passed which might abridge the "privacy" of individuals. But there is not.

Implications

The Griswold case focused on the privacy rights of married couples. A later case, Eisenstadt v. Baird, established the right of unmarried people to contraception.

Privacy arguments also arose in the later, much more controversial Roe v. Wade case.

See also: Sex laws in the fifty states, Sex-related court cases

External links

• Cornell Legal Information Institute
• Full text of Supreme Court decision

References

• Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "Griswold_v._Connecticut" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griswold_v._Connecticut, used under the GNU Free Documentation License