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. 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. Stewart famously called the Connecticut statute "an uncommonly silly law," but noted that it was nevertheless constitutional.
Since Griswold, the Supreme Court has made several further rulings protecting sexual privacy. Most notably, in Roe v. Wade (1973), the Supreme Court decided that the Constitution protected a right to abortion. 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."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griswold_v._Connecticut
