Griswold v. Connecticut

Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965)Findlaw Full Text of Case, was a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Constitution protected a right to privacy. The case involved a Connecticut law that prohibited the use of contraceptives. By a vote of 7-2, the Supreme Court invalidated the law on the grounds that it violated the "right to marital privacy."

Although the Bill of Rights does not explicitly mention "privacy," Justice William O. Douglas (writing for the majority) ruled that the right was to be found in the "penumbras" of other constitutional protections. Justice Arthur Goldberg wrote a concurring opinion in which he used the Ninth Amendment to defend the Supreme Court's ruling. Justice John Marshall Harlan II wrote a concurring opinion in which he argued that privacy is protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice Byron White also wrote a concurrence based on the due process clause.

Two Justices, Hugo Black and Potter Stewart, filed dissents. Black argued that the right to privacy is to be found nowhere in the Constitution. Furthermore, he criticized the interpretations of the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments to which his fellow Justices adhered. Stewart famously called the Connecticut statute "an uncommonly silly law," but noted that it was nevertheless constitutional.

Since Griswold, the Supreme Court has made several further rulings protecting sexual privacy. Most notably, in Roe v. Wade (1973), the Supreme Court decided that the Constitution protected a right to abortion. For the most part, the Court has made these later rulings on the basis of Justice Harlan's substantive due process rationale. The Griswold line of cases remains controversial, and has drawn accusations of "judicial activism."

Prior history

Griswold v. Connecticut involved a Connecticut law that prohibited the use of "any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception." Although the law was passed in 1879, the statute was almost never enforced. Attempts were made to test the constitutionality of the law; however, the challenges had failed on technical grounds.

In Poe v. Ullman (1943), a doctor challenged the statute on the grounds that a ban on contraception could, in certain situations, threaten the lives and well-being of his patients. The Supreme Court dismissed the appeal on the grounds that the plaintiff lacked standing to sue on behalf of his patients. A second challenge to the Connecticut law was brought by a doctor as well as his patients in Poe v. Ullman (1961). However, the Supreme Court again voted to dismiss the appeal, on the grounds that the case was not ripe. It held that, because the plaintiffs had not been charged or threatened with prosecution, there was no actual controversy for the judiciary to resolve. Thus, the Connecticut statute had evaded judicial review until Griswold v. Connecticut.

In Poe, Justice John Marshall Harlan II filed one of the most cited dissenting opinions in Supreme Court history. He argued, firstly, that the Supreme Court should have heard the case rather than dismissing it. Thereafter, he indicated his support for a broad interpretation of the due process clause. He famously wrote, "the full scope of the liberty guaranteed by the Due Process Clause cannot be found in or limited by the precise terms of the specific guarantees elsewhere provided in the Constitution. This 'liberty' is not a series of isolated points pricked out in terms of the taking of property; the freedom of speech, press, and religion; the right to keep and bear arms; the freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures; and so on. It is a rational continuum which, broadly speaking, includes a freedom from all substantial arbitrary impositions and purposeless restraints." On the basis of this interpretation of the due process clause, Harlan concluded that the Connecticut statute violated the Constitution.

Shortly after the Poe decision was handed down, Estelle Griswold (Executive Director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut) and Dr. C. Lee Buxton (a physician and professor at the Yale School of Medicine) opened a birth control clinic in New Haven, Connecticut, in order to test the contraception law once again. Shortly after the clinic was opened, Griswold and Buxton were arrested, tried, found guilty, and fined $100 each. The conviction was upheld by the Appellate Division of the Circuit Court, and by the Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors. Griswold then appealed her conviction to the Supreme Court of the United States.

The Court's decision

The Supreme Court overturned Griswold's conviction and invalidated the Connecticut law. The majority opinion, authored by William O. Douglas, joined by Chief Justice Earl Warren, and Justices Tom C. Clark, William J. Brennan, Jr., and Arthur J. Goldberg, famously argued that the Bill of Rights protected a "right of privacy" contained in the "penumbras" of the first eight amendments to the Bill of Rights, as well as the Ninth Amendment:

"The foregoing cases suggest that specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance (citation omitted). Various guarantees create zones of privacy. ... The Ninth Amendment provides: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

The Court limited its analysis to married couples.

Goldberg's concurrence

A concurring opinion by Justice Arthur J. Goldberg, joined by Chief Justice Earl Warren and Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. argued that the existence of the "right of privacy" was bolstered by the Ninth Amendment's protection of unenumerated rights. Justice Goldberg wrote:

Since 1791 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.

Justices John Marshall Harlan II and Byron White concurred in the judgment invalidating the Connecticut law, but based their opinions relying on the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Harlan, in particular, urged that the Due Process Clause protected liberties unenumerated in the first ten amendments of the Bill of Rights. White's opinion argued that the Connecticut law served no coherent purpose.

Black and Stewart's dissents

Justices Potter Stewart and Hugo Black dissented, denying the existence of any constitutional provisions protecting the "right of privacy," and fearing the consequences of a departure from the Constitution's text. Both justices noted that the "right of privacy" had generally been held to inhere in the Fourth Amendment (and was thus limited textually to the language of that amendment), not the Bill of Rights generally. Stewart wrote:

In the course of its opinion, the Court refers to no less than six amendments to the constitution: the first, the third, the fourth, the fifth, the ninth and the fourteenth. But the court does not say which of these Amendments, if any, it thinks are infringed by this law.

And:

The Ninth Amendment ... 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.

Stewart also stated that, though he believed the Connecticut law was an "uncommonly silly one" (language later quoted by Justice Clarence Thomas, dissenting in Lawrence v. Texas), he did not believe it in his power under the Constitution to invalidate it, noting that:

We are not asked in this case to say whether we think this law is unwise, or even asinine. We are asked to hold that it violates the United States Constitution. And that, I cannot do.

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.

And:

^*or a period of a century and a half, no serious suggestion was ever made that the Ninth Amendment, enacted to protect state powers against Federal invasion, could be used as a weapon of Federal power to prevent state legislatures from passing laws they consider appropriate to govern local affairs.

Subsequent jurisprudence

Later decisions by the Court extended the principles of Griswold beyond its particular facts. Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972) struck down a Massachusetts law barring the sale of contraceptives to unmarried couples and thus extended the "right of privacy" to all procreative decisions. The reasoning and language of both Griswold and Eisenstadt were cited in support of the Court's result in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), which extended the "right of privacy" to cover abortion. The highly controversial Roe would be limited in later cases, such as Maher v. Roe (1977) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), but its "central holding" has remained intact. Lawrence v. Texas (2003) struck a state sodomy law by upholding a broadly defined right to private, consensual, intimate adult contact. Lawrence expressly placed itself in the Griswold line of cases, though it did not use the "right of privacy" language.

External links

Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965) (full text with links to cited material)
Audio of Griswold oral arguments from Oyez