Supreme Court Meme
Oct. 3rd, 2008 10:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
omorkaGanked from a couple of people, most recently ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
princejvstin:
The Rules: Post info about ONE US Supreme Court decision, modern or historic to your lj. (Any decision, as long as it's not Roe v. Wade.)
Griswold v. Connecticut. This 1965 case established that the Bill of Rights implies, even if it never explicitly states, the right to privacy. It overturned an 1879 Connecticut law prohibiting the use of either chemical or barrier contraception. The court voted 7-2 that the law violated an assumed right that dwells in, with, and under the enumerated rights of the Bill of Rights and other Constitutional amendments. Justice Douglas suggested that the right of privacy was an "emanation" from other named rights throughout the Bill of Rights; Justice Harlan pointed specifically to the second, fourth, and fourteenth amendments; Justice Goldberg went where I would have gone, to the ninth amendment (where unenumerated rights are reserved to the people).
Further Supreme Court cases establishing that even unmarried couples had a right to contraception, as well as Roe v. Wade and Lawrence v. Texas, are built on the foundation of Griswold,, and if you scratch the surface of the religious "pro-life" groups, even the non-Catholic ones, you'll find that the case they truly think is bad law, the one they really wish to overturn, is not the (admittedly somewhat clumsily written) Roe, but the simple elegance of Griswold itself.
Estelle Griswold is one of my true heroes.
princejvstin:The Rules: Post info about ONE US Supreme Court decision, modern or historic to your lj. (Any decision, as long as it's not Roe v. Wade.)
Griswold v. Connecticut. This 1965 case established that the Bill of Rights implies, even if it never explicitly states, the right to privacy. It overturned an 1879 Connecticut law prohibiting the use of either chemical or barrier contraception. The court voted 7-2 that the law violated an assumed right that dwells in, with, and under the enumerated rights of the Bill of Rights and other Constitutional amendments. Justice Douglas suggested that the right of privacy was an "emanation" from other named rights throughout the Bill of Rights; Justice Harlan pointed specifically to the second, fourth, and fourteenth amendments; Justice Goldberg went where I would have gone, to the ninth amendment (where unenumerated rights are reserved to the people).
Further Supreme Court cases establishing that even unmarried couples had a right to contraception, as well as Roe v. Wade and Lawrence v. Texas, are built on the foundation of Griswold,, and if you scratch the surface of the religious "pro-life" groups, even the non-Catholic ones, you'll find that the case they truly think is bad law, the one they really wish to overturn, is not the (admittedly somewhat clumsily written) Roe, but the simple elegance of Griswold itself.
Estelle Griswold is one of my true heroes.
