Hmm, OK... do people actually have a problem with Griswold v. Connecticut, which upheld a married couple's right to use contraception?
I have no problem with state legislation providing that. But I have a big problem pretending such a 'right' is protected by the constitution.
Yes. Because it is the genesis of a Constitutional law doctrine that epitomizes judicial activism. Roe was built on top of Griswold. All of the justices, FWIW, did not like the CT law. But the dissent felt thatthe court had no business making law, rather only of interpreting it.
Griswold represents one case where the Court decided to "make law." One paragraph from the dissent by Justices Black and Stewart ...
While I completely subscribe to the holding of Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, and subsequent cases, that our Court has constitutional power to strike down statutes, state or federal, that violate commands of the Federal Constitution, I do not believe that we are granted power by the Due Process Clause or any other constitutional provision or provisions to measure constitutionality by our belief that legislation is arbitrary, capricious or unreasonable, or accomplishes no justifiable purpose, or is offensive to our own notions of "civilized standards of conduct." 5 Such an appraisal of the wisdom of legislation is an attribute of the power to make laws, not of the power to interpret them. The use by federal courts of such a formula or doctrine or whatnot to veto federal or state laws simply takes away from Congress and States the power to make laws based on their own judgment of fairness and wisdom and transfers that power to this Court for ultimate determination - a power which was specifically denied to federal courts by the convention that framed the Constitution.http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=381&invol=479
"do people actually have a problem with Griswold v. Connecticut, which upheld a married couple's right to use contraception?"
Well, it is the case relied on in Roe v. Wade I believe.
"do people actually have a problem with Griswold v. Connecticut, which upheld a married couple's right to use contraception?""
There is a HUGH AND SERIES difference between (a) agreeing with the RESULT of a case, and (b) agreeing with the LEGAL REASONING used to reach the result. The problem is that peole who disagree with a decision because they don't like the legal reasoning can be BORKED by those who claim that means they don't like the result, either.
For a discussion of the key dissent in Griswold, see this:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1502605/posts
Yes and so should every opponent of our judicial tyranny. You can read the opinions here. The majority opinions are a mess, full of penumbras and emanations and what not where activist judges backfill for their desired result. The dissenting opinions are quite good. Here is a snippet from Black's dissent.
One of the most effective ways of diluting or expanding a constitutionally guaranteed right is to substitute for the crucial word or words of a constitutional guarantee another word or words, more or less flexible and more or less restricted in meaning. This fact is well illustrated by the use of the term "right of privacy" as a comprehensive substitute for the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against "unreasonable searches and seizures." "Privacy" is a broad, abstract and ambiguous concept which can easily be shrunken in meaning but which can also, on the other hand, easily be interpreted as a constitutional ban against many things other than searches and seizures. I have expressed the view many times that First Amendment freedoms, for example, have suffered from a failure of the courts to stick to the simple language of the First Amendment in construing it, instead of invoking multitudes of words substituted for those the Framers used. ... For these reasons I get nowhere in this case by talk about a constitutional "right of privacy" as an emanation from [381 U.S. 479, 510] one or more constitutional provisions. I like my privacy as well as the next one, but I am nevertheless compelled to admit that government has a right to invade it unless prohibited by some specific constitutional provision. For these reasons I cannot agree with the Court's judgment and the reasons it gives for holding this Connecticut law unconstitutional.This is from Stewart's dissent.
At the oral argument in this case we were told that the Connecticut law does not "conform to current community standards." But it is not the function of this Court to decide cases on the basis of community standards. We are here to decide cases "agreeably to the Constitution and laws of the United States." It is the essence of judicial [381 U.S. 479, 531] duty to subordinate our own personal views, our own ideas of what legislation is wise and what is not. If, as I should surely hope, the law before us does not reflect the standards of the people of Connecticut, the people of Connecticut can freely exercise their true Ninth and Tenth Amendment rights to persuade their elected representatives to repeal it. That is the constitutional way to take this law off the books.