Griswold v. Connecticut
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| Griswold v. Connecticut | |||||||||||||
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 Supreme Court of the United States |
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| Argued March 29, 1965 Decided June 7, 1965 |
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| Holding | |||||||||||||
| A Connecticut law criminalizing the use of contraceptives violated the right to marital privacy. Connecticut Supreme Court reversed. | |||||||||||||
| Court membership | |||||||||||||
| Chief Justice: Earl Warren Associate Justices: Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, Tom C. Clark, John Marshall Harlan II, William J. Brennan, Potter Stewart, Byron White, Arthur Joseph Goldberg |
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| Case opinions | |||||||||||||
| Majority by: Douglas Joined by: Warren, Clark, Brennan, Goldberg Concurrence by: Goldberg Joined by: Warren, Brennan Concurrence by: Harlan Concurrence by: White Dissent by: Black Joined by: Stewart Dissent by: Stewart Joined by: Black |
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| Laws applied | |||||||||||||
| U.S. Const. amends. IX, XIV; Conn. Gen. Stat. ยงยง 53-32, 54-196 (rev. 1958) | |||||||||||||
Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965)[1], 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. Justice 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. Justice Stewart famously called the Connecticut statute "an uncommonly silly law", but argued that it was nevertheless constitutional.
Since Griswold, the Supreme Court has cited the right to privacy in several rulings protecting access to sexual healthcare, most notably, in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973). The Supreme Court ruled that a woman's choice to have an abortion was protected as a private decision between her and her doctor. 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".
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[edit] 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 Tileston 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, foremost, 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.
[edit] 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. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003) struck down 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.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965) (full text with links to cited material)
- Audio of Griswold oral arguments from Oyez
