June 10, 2005

Looking Back at a Landmark Court Decision in the Formal Development of a Right of Privacy

By DAVID GLENN

John W. Johnson, a professor of history at the University of Northern Iowa

On June 7, 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, striking down Connecticut's ban on contraception. The case was a landmark in the development of a formal right of privacy, and it led in a more or less direct line to Roe v. Wade (1973), which struck down state bans on abortion, and Lawrence v. Texas (2003), which struck down state bans on sodomy. Some scholars found