Griswold v. Connecticut - Significance, 1879 Law Alive And Well, On To The Supreme Court, Decision Reverses Convictions

Griswold v. Connecticut - Significance

The decision articulated a constitutional "right to privacy," which would later be interpreted as protecting the right of unmarried persons to use birth control inEisenstadt v. Baird (1972), and the right of women to terminate their pregnancies in Roe v. Wade (1973). Connecticut's anti-contraceptive law, passed in 1879, was simple and unambiguous: Any person who uses any drug, medicinal article or…

Griswold v. Connecticut - Further Readings

Griswold v. Connecticut - 1879 Law Alive And Well

Griswold and Buxton were arrested and their center closed on 10 November 1961. On 8 December 1961, the opening day of the Sixth Circuit Court trial, defense attorney Catherine G. Roraback argued that Connecticut's birth-control law violated their clients' constitutional right to freedom of speech. Judge J. Robert Lacey, saying he wished to study the defense's brief, continued the case indefinitely…

Griswold v. Connecticut - On To The Supreme Court

The first action Planned Parenthood took in preparing Griswold v. Connecticut for the U.S. Supreme Court was to replace its female attorneys, Roraback and Pilpel, with two male attorneys: Fowler Harper and, upon his death, Thomas I. Emerson, both professors at Yale Law School. Oral argument began before the Supreme Court on 29 March 1964. Ethel Kennedy (wife of Senator Robert F. Kennedy) and Joan …

Griswold v. Connecticut - Decision Reverses Convictions

The Supreme Court, in a 7-2 ruling, reversed Griswold's and Buxton's convictions, invalidated the 1879 law, and enunciated a constitutional "right to privacy." The majority opinion, written by Justice Douglas, declared that the "specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance" and cited the Constitution's F…

Griswold v. Connecticut - Griswold Applied Outside The Marital Bedroom

Before Griswold, the Ninth Amendment had usually been interpreted as reserving to the state government any right not specifically granted to the federal government; Douglas' literal interpretation, that the Ninth Amendment reserved such rights to the people, formed the basis of two other successful challenges to state reproduction laws. In Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972), single people won the right to…

Griswold v. Connecticut - Related Cases

Griswold v. Connecticut - The Right To Privacy

Since Griswold and, even more significant, Roe v. Wade (1973), it has been commonplace to refer to a "right to privacy." But just as people tend to erroneously attribute to the Bible statements such as "The Lord helps them that help themselves," there is no reference to a "right to privacy" in the Constitution. Nonetheless, many would say that the above expression is consistent with the Bible, and…