Griswald v. Connecticut, 1965

Editor’s Note: Please visit our home page for a full listing of abortion facts.

This case was to be a stepping stone to Roe v. Wade. The case provided that it was unconstitutional to outlaw contraceptives of any sort.

Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S.Ct. 1678, 14 L.Ed.2d 510 (1965).

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GRISWOLD et al. v. CONNECTICUT

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APPEAL FROM THE SUPREME COURT OF CRIMINAL ERRORS OF CONNECTICUT

No. 496

Supreme Court of the United States

Argued March 29, 1965.

Decided June 7, 1965.

Joseph B. Clark, New Haven, Conn., for appellee.

*480

Mr. Justice DOUGLAS delivered the opinion of the Court.

Appellant Griswold is Executive Director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut. Appellant Buxton is a licensed physician and a professor at the Yale Medical School who served as Medical Director for the League at its Center in New Haven–a center open and operating from November 1 to November 10, 1961, when appellants were arrested.

They gave information, instruction, and medical advice to married persons as to the means of preventing conception. They examined the wife and prescribed the best contraceptive device or material for her use. Fees were usually charged, although some couples were serviced free.

The statutes whose constitutionality is involved in this appeal are ss 53-32 and 54-196 of the General Statutes of Connecticut (1958 rev.). The former provides:

‘Any person who uses any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception shall be fined not less than fifty dollars or imprisoned not less than sixty days nor more than one year or be both fined and imprisoned.’

Section 54-196 provides:

‘Any person who assists, abets, counsels, causes, hires or commands another to commit any offense may be prosecuted and punished as if he were the principal offender.’

The appellants were found guilty as accessories and fined $100 each, against the claim that the accessory statute as so applied violated the Fourteenth Amendment. The Appellate Division of the Circuit Court affirmed. The Supreme Court of Errors affirmed that judgment. 151 Conn. 544, 200 A.2d 479. We noted probable jurisdiction. 379 U.S. 926, 85 S.Ct. 328, 13 L.Ed.2d 339.

*481 We think that appellants have standing to raise the constitutional rights of the married people with whom they had a professional relationship. Tileston v. Ullman, 318 U.S. 44, 63 S.Ct. 493, 87 L.Ed. 603, is different, for there the plaintiff seeking to represent others asked for a declaratory judgment. In that situation we thought that the requirements of standing should be strict, lest the standards of ‘case or controversy’ in Article III of the Constitution become blurred. Here those doubts are removed by reason of a criminal conviction for serving married couples in violation of an aiding-and-abetting statute. Certainly the accessory should have standing to assert that the offense which he is charged with assisting is not, or cannot constitutionally be a crime.

This case is more akin to Truax v. Raich, 239 U.S. 33, 36 S.Ct. 7, 60 L.Ed. 131, where an employee was permitted to assert the rights of his employer; to Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, 45 S.Ct. 571, 69 L.Ed. 1070, where the owners of private schools were entitled to assert the rights of potential pupils and their parents; and to Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U.S. 249, 73 S.Ct. 1031, 97 L.Ed. 1586, where a white defendant, party to a racially restrictive covenant, who was being sued for damages by the covenantors because she had conveyed her property to Negroes, was allowed to raise the issue that enforcement of the covenant violated the rights of prospective Negro purchasers to equal protection, although no Negro was a party to the suit. And see Meyer v. State of Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 43 S.Ct. 625, 67 L.Ed. 1042; Adler v. Board of Education, 342 U.S. 485, 72 S.Ct. 380, 96 L.Ed. 517; NAACP v. State of Alabama, 357 U.S. 449, 78 S.Ct. 1163, 2 L.Ed.2d 1488; NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415, 83 S.Ct. 328, 9 L.Ed.2d 405. The rights of husband and wife, pressed here, are likely to be diluted or adversely affected unless those rights are considered in a suit involving those who have this kind of confidential relation to them.

Coming to the merits, we are met with a wide range of questions that implicate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Overtones of some arguments *482 suggest that Lochner v. State of New York, 198 U.S. 45, 25 S.Ct. 539, 49 L.Ed. 937, should be our guide. But we decline that invitation as we did in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, 300 U.S. 379, 57 S.Ct. 578, 81 L.Ed. 703; Olsen v. State of Nebraska, 313 U.S. 236, 61 S.Ct. 862, 85 L.Ed. 1305; Lincoln Federal Labor Union v. Northwestern Co., 335 U.S. 525, 69 S.Ct. 251, 93 L.Ed. 212; Williamson v. Lee Optical Co., 348 U.S. 483, 75 S.Ct. 461, 99 L.Ed. 563; Giboney v. Empire Storage Co., 336 U.S. 490, 69 S.Ct. 684, 93 L.Ed. 834. We do not sit as a super-legislature to determine the wisdom, need, and propriety of laws that touch economic problems, business affairs, or social conditions. This law, however, operates directly on an intimate relation of husband and wife and their physician’s role in one aspect of that relation.

The association of people is not mentioned in the Constitution nor in the Bill of Rights. The right to educate a child in a school of the parents’ choice–whether public or private or parochial–is also not mentioned. Nor is the right to study any particular subject or any foreign language. Yet the First Amendment has been construed to include certain of those rights.

By Pierce v. Society of Sisters, supra, the right to educate one’s children as one chooses is made applicable to the States by the force of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. By Meyer v. State of Nebraska, supra, the same dignity is given the right to study the German language in a private school. In other words, the State may not, consistently with the spirit of the First Amendment, contract the spectrum of available knowledge. The right of freedom of speech and press includes not only the right to utter or to print, but the right to distribute, the right to receive, the right to read (Martin v. City of Struthers, 319 U.S. 141, 143, 63 S.Ct. 862, 863, 87 L.Ed. 1313) and freedom of inquiry, freedom of thought, and freedom to teach (see Wieman v. Updegraff, 344 U.S. 183, 195, 73 S.Ct. 215, 220, 97 L.Ed. 216)–indeed the freedom of the entire university community. Sweezy v. State of New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234, 249-250, 261-263, 77 S.Ct. 1203, 1211, 1217-1218, 1 L.Ed.2d 1311; Barenblatt v. United States, 360 U.S. 109, 112, 79 S.Ct. 1081, 1085, 3 L.Ed.2d 1115; Baggett v. Bullitt, 377 U.S. 360, 369, 84 S.Ct. 1316, 1321, 12 L.Ed.2d 377. Without *483 those peripheral rights the specific rights would be less secure. And so we reaffirm the principle of the Pierce and the Meyer cases.

In NAACP v. State of Alabama, 357 U.S. 449, 462, 78 S.Ct. 1163, 1172, we protected the ‘freedom to associate and privacy in one’s associations,’ noting that freedom of association was a peripheral First Amendment right. Disclosure of membership lists of a constitutionally valid association, we held, was invalid ‘as entailing the likelihood of a substantial restraint upon the exercise by petitioner’s members of their right to freedom of association.’ Ibid. In other words, the First Amendment has a penumbra where privacy is protected from governmental intrusion. In like context, we have protected forms of ‘association’ that are not political in the customary sense but pertain to the social, legal, and economic benefit of the members. NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415, 430-431, 83 S.Ct. 328, 336-337. In Schware v. Board of Bar Examiners, 353 U.S. 232, 77 S.Ct. 752, 1 L.Ed.2d 796, we held it not permissible to bar a lawyer from practice, because he had once been a member of the Communist Party. The man’s ‘association with that Party’ was not shown to be ‘anything more than a political faith in a political party’ (id., at 244, 77 S.Ct. at 759) and was not action of a kind proving bad moral character. Id., at 245-246, 77 S.Ct. at 759-760.

Those cases involved more than the ‘right of assembly’–a right that extends to all irrespective of their race or idealogy. De Jonge v. State of Oregon, 299 U.S. 353, 57 S.Ct. 255, 81 L.Ed. 278. The right of ‘association,’ like the right of belief (West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 63 S.Ct. 1178), is more than the right to attend a meeting; it includes the right to express one’s attitudes or philosophies by membership in a group or by affiliation with it or by other lawful means. Association in that context is a form of expression of opinion; and while it is not expressly included in the First Amendment its existence is necessary in making the express guarantees fully meaningful.

*484 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. See Poe v. Ullman, 367 U.S. 497, 516-522, 81 S.Ct. 1752, 6 L.Ed.2d 989 (dissenting opinion). Various guarantees create zones of privacy. The right of association contained in the penumbra of the First Amendment is one, as we have seen. The Third Amendment in its prohibition against the quartering of soldiers ‘in any house’ in time of peace without the consent of the owner is another facet of that privacy. The Fourth Amendment explicitly affirms the ‘right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.’ The Fifth Amendment in its Self-Incrimination Clause enables the citizen to create a zone of privacy which government may not force him to surrender to his detriment. 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 Fourth and Fifth Amendments were described in Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 630, 6 S.Ct. 524, 532, 29 L.Ed. 746, as protection against all governmental invasions ‘of the sanctity of a man’s home and the privacies of life.’ [Fn*] We recently referred *485 in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 656, 81 S.Ct. 1684, 1692, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081, to the Fourth Amendment as creating a ‘right to privacy, no less important than any other right carefully and particularly reserved to the people.’ See Beaney, The Constitutional Right to Privacy, 1962 Sup.Ct.Rev. 212; Griswold, The Right to be Let Alone, 55 Nw.U.L.Rev. 216 (1960).

Fn* The Court said in full about this right of privacy:

‘The principles laid down in this opinion (by Lord Camden in Entick v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029) affect the very essence of constitutional liberty and security. They reach further than the concrete form of the case then before the court, with its adventitious circumstances; they apply to all invasions on the part of the government and its employes of the sanctity of a man’s home and the privacies of life. It is not the breaking of his doors, and the rummaging of his drawers, that constitutes the essence of the offense; but it is the invasion of his indefeasible right of personal security, personal liberty and private property, where that right has never been forfeited by his conviction of some public offense,–it is the invasion of this sacred right which underlies and constitutes the essence of Lord Camden’s judgment. Breaking into a house and opening boxes and drawers are circumstances of aggravation; but any forcible and compulsory extortion of a man’s own testimony, or of his private papers to be used as evidence to convict him of crime, or to forfeit his goods, is within the condemnation of that judgment. In this regard the fourth and fifth amendments run almost into each other.’ 116 U.S., at 630, 6 S.Ct., at 532.

We have had many controversies over these penumbral rights of ‘privacy and repose.’ See, e.g., Breard v. City of Alexandria, 341 U.S. 622, 626, 644, 71 S.Ct. 920, 923, 933, 95 L.Ed. 1233; Public Utilities Comm. v. Pollak, 343 U.S. 451, 72 S.Ct. 813, 96 L.Ed. 1068; Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 81 S.Ct. 473, 5 L.Ed.2d 492; Lanza v. State of New York, 370 U.S. 139, 82 S.Ct. 1218, 8 L.Ed.2d 384; Frank v. State of Maryland, 359 U.S. 360, 79 S.Ct. 804, 3 L.Ed.2d 877; Skinner v. State of Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541, 62 S.Ct. 1110, 1113, 86 L.Ed. 1655. These cases bear witness that the right of privacy which presses for recognition here is a legitimate one.

The present case, then, concerns a relationship lying within the zone of privacy created by several fundamental constitutional guarantees. And it concerns a law which, in forbidding the use of contraceptives rather than regulating their manufacture or sale, seeks to achieve its goals by means having a maximum destructive impact upon that relationship. Such a law cannot stand in light of the familiar principle, so often applied by this Court, that a ‘governmental purpose to control or prevent activities constitutionally subject to state regulation may not be achieved by means which sweep unnecessarily broadly and thereby invade the area of protected freedoms.’ NAACP v. Alabama, 377 U.S. 288, 307, 84 S.Ct. 1302, 1314, 12 L.Ed.2d 325. Would we allow the police to search the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives? The *486 very idea is repulsive to the notions of privacy surrounding the marriage relationship.

We deal with a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights–older than our political parties, older than our school system. Marriage is a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred. It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects. Yet it is an association for as noble a purpose as any involved in our prior decisions.

Reversed.

Mr. Justice WHITE, concurring in the judgment.

In my view this Connecticut law as applied to married couples deprives them of ‘liberty’ without due process of law, as that concept is used in the Fourteenth Amendment. I therefore concur in the judgment of the Court reversing these convictions under Connecticut’s aiding and abetting statute.

It would be unduly repetitious, and belaboring the obvious, to expound on the impact of this statute on the liberty guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment against arbitrary or capricious denials or on the nature of this liberty. Suffice it to say that this is not the first time this Court has had occasion to articulate that the liberty entitled to protection under the Fourteenth Amendment includes the right ‘to marry, establish a home and bring up children,’ Meyer v. State of Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 399, 43 S.Ct. 625, 626, 67 L.Ed.2d 1042 and ‘the liberty . . . to direct the upbringing and education of children,’ Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, 534- 535, 45 S.Ct. 571, 573, 69 L.Ed. 1070, and that these are among ‘the basic civil rights of man.’ Skinner v. State of Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541, 62 S.Ct. 1110, 1113, 86 L.Ed. 1655. These decisions affirm that there is a ‘realm of family life which the state cannot enter’ without substantial justification. Prince v. Com. of Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158, 166, 64 S.Ct. 438, 442, 88 L.Ed. 645. Surely the right invoked in this case, to be free of regulation of the intimacies of *503 the marriage relationship, ‘come(s) to this Court with a momentum for respect lacking when appeal is made to liberties which derive merely from shifting economic arrangements.’ Kovacs v. Cooper, 336 U.S. 77, 95, 69 S.Ct. 448, 458, 93 L.Ed. 513 (opinion of Frankfurter, J.).

The Connecticut anti-contraceptive statute deals rather substantially with this relationship. For it forbids all married persons the right to use birth-control devices, regardless of whether their use is dictated by considerations of family planning, Trubek v. Ullman, 147 Conn. 633, 165 A.2d 158, health, or indeed even of life itself. Buxton v. Ullman, 147 Conn. 48, 156 A.2d 508. The anti-use statute, together with the general aiding and abetting statute, prohibits doctors from affording advice to married persons on proper and effective methods of birth control. Tileston v. Ullman, 129 Conn. 84, 26 A.2d 582. And the clear effect of these statutes, as enforced, is to deny disadvantaged citizens of Connecticut, those without either adequate knowledge or resources to obtain private counseling, access to medical assistance and up-to-date information in respect to proper methods of birth control. State v. Nelson, 126 Conn. 412, 11 A.2d 856; State v. Griswold, 151 Conn. 544, 200 A.2d 479. In my view, a statute with these effects bears a substantial burden of justification when attacked under the Fourteenth Amendment. Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 6 S.Ct. 1064, 30 L.Ed. 220; Skinner v. State of Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 62 S.Ct. 1110; Schware v. Board of Bar Examiners, 353 U.S. 232, 77 S.Ct. 752, 1 L.Ed.2d 796; McLaughlin v. Florida, 379 U.S. 184, 192, 85 S.Ct. 283, 288.

An examination of the justification offered, however, cannot be avoided by saying that the Connecticut anti-use statute invades a protected area of privacy and association or that it demands the marriage relationship. The nature of the right invaded is pertinent, to be sure, for statutes regulating sensitive areas of liberty do, under *504 the cases of this Court, require ‘strict scrutiny,’ Skinner v. State of Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541, 62 S.Ct. 1110, and ‘must be viewed in the light of less drastic means for achieving the same basic purpose.’ Shelton v. Tucker, 364 U.S. 479, 488, 81 S.Ct. 247, 252, 5 L.Ed.2d 231. ‘Where there is a significant encroachment upon personal liberty, the State may prevail only upon showing a subordinating interest which is compelling.’ Bates v. City of Little Rock, 361 U.S. 516, 524, 80 S.Ct. 412, 417. See also McLaughlin v. State of Florida, 379 U.S. 184, 85 S.Ct. 283. But such statutes, if reasonably necessary for the effectuation of a legitimate and substantial state interest, and not arbitrary or capricious in application, are not invalid under the Due Process Clause. Zemel v. Rusk, 381 U.S. 1, 85 S.Ct. 1271.*

* Dissenting opinions assert that the liberty guaranteed by the Due Process Clause is limited to a guarantee against unduly vague statutes and against procedural unfairness at trial. Under this view the Court is without authority to ascertain whether a challenged statute, or its application, has a permissible purpose and whether the manner of regulation bears a rational or justifying relationship to this purpose. A long line of cases makes very clear that this has not been the view of this Court. Dent v. State of West Virginia, 129 U.S. 114, 9 S.Ct. 231, 32 L.Ed. 623; Jacobson v. Com. of Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11, 25 S.Ct. 358, 49 L.Ed. 643; Douglas v. Noble, 261 U.S. 165, 43 S.Ct. 303, 67 L.Ed. 590; Meyer v. State of Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 43 S.Ct. 625; Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, 45 S.Ct. 571; Schware v. Board of Bar Examiners, 353 U.S. 232, 77 S.Ct. 752; Aptheker v. Secretary of State, 378 U.S. 500, 84 S.Ct. 1659; Zemel v. Rusk, 381 U.S. 1, 85 S.Ct. 1271.

The traditional due process test was well articulated, and applied, in Schware v. Board of Bar Examiners, supra, a case which placed no reliance on the specific guarantees of the Bill of Rights.

‘A State cannot exclude a person from the practice of law or from any other occupation in a manner or for reasons that contravene the Due Process or Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Dent v. State of West Virginia, 129 U.S. 114, 9 S.Ct. 231, 32 L.Ed. 623. Cf. Slochower v. Board of Higher Education, 350 U.S. 551, 76 S.Ct. 637, 100 L.Ed. 692; Wieman v. Updegraff, 344 U.S. 183, 73 S.Ct. 215, 97 L.Ed. 216. And see Ex parte Secombe, 19 How. 9, 13, 15 L.Ed. 565. A State can require high standards of qualification, such as good moral character or proficiency in its law, before it admits an applicant to the bar, but any qualification must have a rational connection with the applicant’s fitness or capacity to practice law. Douglas v. Noble, 261 U.S. 165, 43 S.Ct. 303, 67 L.Ed. 590; Cummings v. State of Missouri, 4 Wall. 277, 319-320, 18 L.Ed. 356. Cf. Nebbia v. People of State of New York, 291 U.S. 502, 54 S.Ct. 505, 78 L.Ed. 940. Obviously an applicant could not be excluded merely because he was a Republican or a Negro or a member of a particular church. Even in applying permissible standards, officers of a State cannot exclude an applicant when there is no basis for their finding that he fails to meet these standards, or when their action is invidiously discriminatory.’ 353 U.S., at 238-239, 77 S.Ct. at 756. Cf. Martin v. Walton, 368 U.S. 25, 26, 82 S.Ct. 1, 2, 7 L.Ed.2d 5 (Douglas, J., dissenting).

*505 As I read the opinions of the Connecticut courts and the argument of Connecticut in this Court, the State claims but one justification for its anti-use statute. Cf. Allied Stores of Ohio v. Bowers, 358 U.S. 522, 530, 79 S.Ct. 437, 442, 3 L.Ed.2d 480; Martin v. Walton, 368 U.S. 25, 28, 82 S.Ct. 1, 3, 7 L.Ed.2d 5 (Douglas, J., dissenting). There is no serious contention that Connecticut thinks the use of artificial or external methods of contraception immoral or unwise in itself, or that the anti-use statute is founded upon any policy of promoting population expansion. Rather, the statute is said to serve the State’s policy against all forms of promiscuous or illicit sexual relationships, be they premarital or extramarital, concededly a permissible and legitimate legislative goal.

Without taking issue with the premise that the fear of conception operates as a deterrent to such relationships in addition to the criminal proscriptions Connecticut has against such conduct, I wholly fail to see how the ban on the use of contraceptives by married couples in any way reinforces the State’s ban on illicit sexual relationships. See Schware v. Board of Bar Examiners, 353 U.S. 232, 239, 77 S.Ct. 752, 756. Connecticut does not bar the importation or possession of contraceptive devices; they are not considered contraband material under state law, State v. Certain Contraceptive Materials, 126 Conn. 428, 11 A.2d 863, and their availability in that State is not seriously disputed. The only way Connecticut seeks to limit or control the availability of such devices is through its general aiding and abetting statute whose operation in this context has *506 been quite obviously ineffective and whose most serious use has been against birth-control clinics rendering advice to married, rather than unmarried, persons. Cf. Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 6 S.Ct. 1064. Indeed, after over 80 years of the State’s proscription of use, the legality of the sale of such devices to prevent disease has never been expressly passed upon, although it appears that sales have long occurred and have only infrequently been challenged. This ‘undeviating policy . . . throughout all the long years . . . bespeaks more than prosecutorial paralysis.’ Poe v. Ullman, 367 U.S. 497, 502, 81 S.Ct. 1752, 1755. Moreover, it would appear that the sale of contraceptives to prevent disease is plainly legal under Connecticut law.

In these circumstances one is rather hard pressed to explain how the ban on use by married persons in any way prevents use of such devices by persons engaging in illicit sexual relations and thereby contributes to the State’s policy against such relationships. Neither the state courts nor the State before the bar of this Court has tendered such an explanation. It is purely fanciful to believe that the broad proscription on use facilitates discovery of use by persons engaging in a prohibited relationship or for some other reason makes such use more unlikely and thus can be supported by any sort of administrative consideration. Perhaps the theory is that the flat ban on use prevents married people from possessing contraceptives and without the ready availability of such devices for use in the marital relationship, there will be no or less temptation to use them in extramarital ones. This reasoning rests on the premise that married people will comply with the ban in regard to their marital relationship, notwithstanding total nonenforcement in this context and apparent nonenforcibility, but will not comply with criminal statutes prohibiting extramarital affairs and the anti-use statute in respect to illicit sexual relationships, a premise whose validity has not been *507 demonstrated and whose intrinsic validity is not very evident. At most the broad ban is of marginal utility to the declared objective. A statute limiting its prohibition on use to persons engaging in the prohibited relationship would serve the end posited by Connecticut in the same way, and with the same effectiveness, or ineffectiveness, as the broad anti-use statute under attack in this case. I find nothing in this record justifying the sweeping scope of this statute, with its telling effect on the freedoms of married persons, and therefore conclude that it deprives such persons of liberty without due process of law.

Mr. Justice HARLAN, concurring in the judgment.

I fully agree with the judgment of reversal, but find myself unable to join the Court’s opinion. The reason is that it seems to me to evince an approach to this case very much like that taken by my Brothers BLACK and STEWART in dissent, namely: the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not touch this Connecticut statute unless the enactment is found to violate some right assured by the letter or penumbra of the Bill of Rights.

*500 In other words, what I find implicit in the Court’s opinion is that the ‘incorporation’ doctrine may be used to restrict the reach of Fourteenth Amendment Due Process. For me this is just as unacceptable constitutional doctrine as is the use of the ‘incorporation’ approach to impose upon the States all the requirements of the Bill of Rights as found in the provisions of the first eight amendments and in the decisions of this Court interpreting them. See, e.g., my concurring opinions in Pointer v. State of Texas, 380 U.S. 400, 408, 85 S.Ct. 1065, 1070, 13 L.Ed.2d 923, and Griffin v. California, 380 U.S. 609, 615, 85 S.Ct. 1229, 1233, 14 L.Ed.2d 106, and my dissenting opinion in Poe v. Ullman, 367 U.S. 497, 522, at pp. 539-545, 81 S.Ct. 1752, 1774, 1778.

In my view, the proper constitutional inquiry in this case is whether this Connecticut statute infringes the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because the enactment violates basic values ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty,’ Palko v. State of Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 325, 58 S.Ct. 149, 152, 82 L.Ed. 288. For reasons stated at length in my dissenting opinion in Poe v. Ullman, supra, I believe that it does. While the relevant inquiry may be aided by resort to one or more of the provisions of the Bill of Rights, it is not dependent on them or any of their radiations. The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment stands, in my opinion, on its own bottom.

A further observation seems in order respecting the justification of my Brothers BLACK and STEWART for their ‘incorporation’ approach to this case. Their approach does not rest on historical reasons, which are of course wholly lacking (see Fairman, Does the Fourteenth Amendment Incorporate the Bill of Rights? The Original Understanding, 2 Stan.L.Rev. 5 (1949)), but on the thesis that by limiting the content of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the protection of rights which can be found elsewhere in the Constitution, in this instance in the Bill of Rights, judges will thus be confined to ‘interpretation’ of specific constitutional *501 provisions, and will thereby be restrained from introducing their own notions of constitutional right and wrong into the ‘vague contours of the Due Process Clause.’ Rochin v. People of State of California, 342 U.S. 165, 170, 72 S.Ct. 205, 208, 96 L.Ed. 183

While I could not more heartily agree that judicial ‘self restraint’ is an indispensable ingredient of sound constitutional adjudication, I do submit that the formula suggested for achieving it is more hollow than real. ‘Specific’ provisions of the Constitution, no less than ‘due process,’ lend themselves as readily to ‘personal’ interpretations by judges whose constitutional outlook is simply to keep the Constitution in supposed ‘tune with the times’ (post, p. 1702). Need one go further than to recall last Term’s reapportionment cases, Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1, 84 S.Ct. 526, 11 L.Ed.2d 481, and Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533, 84 S.Ct. 1362, 12 L.Ed.2d 506, where a majority of the Court ‘interpreted’ ‘by the People’ (Art. I, s 2) and ‘equal protection’ (Amdt. 14) to command ‘one person, one vote,’ an interpretation that was made in the face of irrefutable and still unanswered history to the contrary? See my dissenting opinions in those cases, 376 U.S., at 20, 84 S.Ct. at 536; 377 U.S., at 589, 84 S.Ct. at 1395.

Judicial self-restraint will not, I suggest, be brought about in the ‘due process’ area by the historically unfounded incorporation formula long advanced by my Brother BLACK, and now in part espoused by my Brother STEWART. It will be achieved in this area, as in other constitutional areas, only by continual insistence upon respect for the teachings of history, solid recognition of the basic values that underlie our society, and wise appreciation of the great roles that the doctrines of federalism and separation of powers have played in establishing and preserving American freedoms. See Adamson v. People of State of California, 332 U.S. 46, 59, 67 S.Ct. 1672, 91 L.Ed. 1903 (Mr. Justice Frankfurter, concurring). Adherence to these principles will not, of course, obviate all constitutional differences of opinion among judges, nor should it. Their continued recognition *502 will, however, go farther toward keeping most judges from roaming at large in the constitutional field than will the interpolation into the Constitution of an artificial and largely illusory restriction on the content of the Due Process Clause. [Fn*]

Fn* Indeed, my Brother BLACK, in arguing his thesis, is forced to lay aside a host of of cases in which the Court has recognized fundamental rights in the Fourteenth Amendment without specific reliance upon the Bill of Rights. Post, p. 1696, n. 4.

Mr. Justice GOLDBERG, whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE and Mr. Justice BRENNAN join, concurring.

I agree with the Court that Connecticut’s birth-control law unconstitutionally intrudes upon the right of marital privacy, and I join in its opinion and judgment. Although I have not accepted the view that ‘due process’ as used in the Fourteenth Amendment includes all of the first eight Amendments (see my concurring opinion in Pointer v. Texas, 380 U.S. 400, 410, 85 S.Ct. 1065, 1071, 13 L.Ed.2d 923, and the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Brennan in Cohen v. Hurley, 366 U.S. 117, 154, 81 S.Ct. 954, 974, 6 L.Ed.2d 156), I do agree that the concept of liberty protects those personal rights that are fundamental, and is not confined to the specific terms of the Bill of Rights. My conclusion that the concept of liberty is not so restricted and that it embraces the right of marital privacy though that right is not mentioned explicitly in the Constitution [Fn1] is supported both by numerous*487 decisions of this Court, referred to in the Court’s opinion, and by the language and history of the Ninth Amendment. In reaching the conclusion that the right of marital privacy is protected, as being within the protected penumbra of specific guarantees of the Bill of Rights, the Court refers to the Ninth Amendment, ante, at 1681. I add these words to emphasize the relevance of that Amendment to the Court’s holding.

Fn1. My Brother STEWART dissents on the ground that he ‘can find no . . . general right of privacy in the Bill of Rights, in any other part of the Constitution, or in any case ever before decided by this Court.’ Post, at 1706. He would require a more expli