| Poe v. Ullman
|
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued ---
| Decided ---
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| Full case name:
| Poe et al. v. Ullman
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| Citations:
| 367 U.S. 497
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| Prior history:
| ---
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| Subsequent history:
| ---
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| Holding
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| Connecticut law barring possession of birth control not ripe for constitutional challenge because of lack of enforcement.
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| Court membership
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| Case opinions
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| Majority by: Frankfurter
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| Joined by: Warren, Clark, Whittaker
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| Concurrence in the judgment by: Brennan
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| Dissent by: Douglas
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| Dissent by: Harlan
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| Dissent by: Stewart
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| Dissent by: Black
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| Laws applied
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| ---
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Poe v. Ullman,
367 U.S. 497 (
1961), was a
United States Supreme Court case that held that
plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge a
Connecticut law that banned the use of
contraceptives, and banned
doctors from advising their use, because the law had never been enforced. Therefore, any challenge to the law was deemed
unripe, because there was no actual threat of injury to anyone who disobeyed the law. The same statute would later be challenged yet again (successfully) in
Griswold v. Connecticut (
1965).
Justice Harlan dissented and, reaching the merits, took a broad view of the "liberty" protected by the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process to include not merely state violations of one of the first eight amendments which had been held to be "incorporated" in the Fourteenth, but against any law which imposed on "liberty" unjustifiably. Harlan described the "liberty" protected by that clause as "a rational continuum which, broadly speaking, includes a freedom from all substantial arbitrary impositions and purposeless restraints." This view has had enormous influence on the modern Supreme Court; Justice David Souter explicitly endorsed this test in his concurrence in 1997's Washington v. Glucksburg, and it influenced the analysis in Lawrence v. Texas.
External link
United States Supreme Court cases | United States civil procedure case law | 1961 in law
"Poe v. Ullman"