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Privacy In Connecticut, Arthur E. Sutherland

Michigan Law Review

Occasionally a judgment of our Supreme Court, delivered in a superficially petty case, suddenly before our startled eyes displays fundamentals of our constitutional theory. Thus, in Griswold v. Connecticut, holding unconstitutional an 1879 Connecticut statute forbidding all persons to use contraceptive devices, the Court found it necessary to discover a "right of privacy" latent in the Bill of Rights and incorporated into the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment. The outcome of the case is satisfying; all nine Justices joined in saying, in one way or another, that Connecticut's statute was nonsense. I am happy to see this …