The Penumbral Question: The Right to Privacy in the United States Constitution

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Many Americans feel the right to privacy is within the Constitution that the founding fathers wrote. This has not always been the case. Many scholars have claimed that the authors of Constitution protected the right to privacy within the Bill of Rights. The Supreme Court initially acknowledged protection under the Fourteenth Amendment due process clause for personal privacy and freedom from government intrusions into marriage, reproduction, and child rearing in the 1920’s, during the Lochner era (Obrien 2011). They then went on to explore the idea further. Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) was one of the first cases to explore the right to privacy. In this case, the Supreme Court struck down a state law that prohibited the teaching of German and other foreign languages in public schools until ninth grade. This decision is especially relevant for a quote by Justice James McReynolds in his majority opinion. He states: Without a doubt, [the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee that “No state…shall deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law”] denotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint but also the right of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry […] and generally enjoy these privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men. This is a very telling interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment and how it relates to the right to privacy afforded in the Constitution. The next landmark case to explore the right to privacy is Griswold v. Connecticut (1965). Griswold was the case in which established penumbral rights within the Bill of Rights. The case arose when a Connecticut law prohibit... ... middle of paper ... ... was instrumental to recognition of the constitutional right to privacy and the interpretation of the Ninth Amendment. This case shows that the Constitution is a living document that can be maneuvered to accommodate for the adaption of American peoples. While it is a stationary and unchanging document, unique interpretations can be gleamed. Privacy is a flame that is not dying out. Americans enjoy the claim that they have the right to privacy; and before the Griswold decision, this was not an explicit right. While the original decision related to a marital right to privacy, it extends further. The future of privacy protection remains open to interpretation. Some of the current Justices want a more narrow view of privacy, while the public wants a more unambiguous view. Only time will tell how the current and future Supreme Courts interpret the right to privacy.

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