[CobaltBlue]

"Right to privacy" is older than Roe v. Wade. Griswold vs. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965) is the first to use the right to privacy to strike down a state statute. The statute in question prohibited the sale of contraceptives.

Legal scholars, for example Brandeis, argued for a right to privacy - "the right to be let alone" - in law review articles written in the 19th century.

[Steve_Seattle]

I'm aware of the Griswold case. The "right to be let alone" is nonsensical as a legal principle, since it knows no boundaries and would undermine all law, but it is effective as a rhetorical flourish. What Roe and Griswold both did was to enshrine the principle that "evolving" social mores invisibly fortify the Constitution with new rights that would have been unimaginable or offensive to the Founding Fathers. It really is ludicrous to imagine that sodomy would have been considered a constitutional right, no matter how much sodomy laws might offend our modern sense of morality, privacy, or the proper extent of the law.