Prior Restraint

This case challenged the rights of marital privacy within the home. In 1961, Griswold and her partner, Dr. Buxton, opened a birth control clinic in New Haven, Connecticut. A law enacted in 1879 made it illegal to use anything to prevent contraception in the state. That’s right, nothing could be used to prevent pregnancy. Consequently due to their actions, Griswold and Buxton were arrested, tried, found guilty, and fined to pay $100. Griswold appealed her conviction to the United States Supreme Court, arguing that the state was in breach of multiple amendments including the fourteenth, first, and of course, the third amendment. The argument based on the third amendment was that the home is and should be a private place. No one is to know what happens in the home, or in the bedroom for that matter. The only way to prove that the women who visited the clinic were actually using birth control would be storm their homes. In the end, it was found that Connecticut's actions were unconstitutional and this court case paved the way for future cases such as the famous Roe vs Wade

Campaign Finance reform has been a topic of interest throughout the history of the United States Government, especially in the more recent decades. There are arguments on both sides of the issue. Proponents of campaign finance limits argue that wealthy donors and corporations hold too much power in elections and as a result they can corrupt campaigns. Those who favor less regulation argue that campaign donations are a form of free speech. One case in particular, Citizens United vs. The Federal Election Commission has altered everything with pertaining to Campaign Finance.

Eisenstadt v. Baird was a landmark decision by the US Supreme Court. It ruled in favor of unmarried couples using birth control. Griswold v. Connecticut provided the right for secrecy under the marital bedroom only, but not birth control on unmarried couples. The ruling was based it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The argument was simple. The law which the defendants were penalized was a Massachusetts law of “Crimes Against Chastity”. Because it did not prosecuted marry couples due to buying, possessing, or using birth controls, it was discriminatory this law persecuted unmarried couples for it. Also it was ruled one of the defendants was exercising his freedom of speech, when distributing birth control. Therefore he could not be punished. Judge Brennan wrote in his opinion

In this Supreme Court 5-4 decision, the Court states that the First Amendment protects corporate and union funding of independent political broadcasts in elections. The First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech.” Or as the Court says, the

The right of free speech granted to all citizens in the first amendment, the necessity of funding expensive political campaigns, and the fact that small donations make a candidate responsive to the needs of their constituents, all make any restrictions on campaign financing unneeded and onerous. Congress should strike down any bills attempting to reform this essential part of the U.S. election process. Any further restrictions on donations to political campaigns will prove detrimental to the United States functioning system of elections by limiting individuals’ freedom of speech, making our candidate’s campaigns underfunded and unresponsive to the needs of the American people.

In 1879, Connecticut passed a law that prohibited the use and education of contraceptives to both married and unmarried women, men, etc. Since this law was said to be seldom enforced, a Planned Parenthood in New Haven, Connecticut decided to take the risk. The executive director of Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, Estelle Griswold, and a doctor and professor at Yale Medical School, Dr. C. Lee Buxton, were arrested, found guilty, and fined $100 each (equivalent to about $750 U.S. today) for counseling a married couple about contraceptives and prescribing birth control to the wife. They appealed to the Supreme Court of Connecticut, where the Connecticut court upheld their conviction. Griswold and Buxton appealed to the Supreme Court of the

Griswold v. Connecticut was argued on March 28-29, 1965 and the decision of the Supreme Court was decided on June 7, 1965. It was questioned whether or not the Constitution protected the rights of marital privacy (limits government intrusion into private family matters) against restrictions for a couple to receive counseling on using contraceptives. Mrs. Griswold had given counseling to a married couple that had wanted to use birth control and it was against Connecticut law to do so. The Supreme Court’s ruling was that married couples have the right to privacy and the law was declared unconstitutional as it violated the right of privacy. Married couples have the right to private privacy.

“[The] right to privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the district court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy." (White, 94)

On June 7th 1965, married couples in the State of Connecticut received the right to acquire and benefit from contraceptive devises. In a majority decision by the United States Supreme Court, seven out of the nine judges believed that sections 53-32 and 54-196 of the General Statues of Connecticut , violated the right of privacy guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. The case set precedence by establishing marital (and later constitutional) privacy, and had notable influence on three later controversial ruling=s in Roe v. Wade (1973), Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) and Planned Parenthood of S.E. Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992) . The issue at hand was, and is still, one that still causes debate, wether a state has the

According to Supreme Court case Griswold v. Connecticut the United States Constitution protects women’s rights to use contraceptives. Our Constitutional heritage and principles contradict the verdict of that case. The general right to privacy that (has been said) is outlined in the Constitution, was used in the Supreme Court case to argue that decisions about a woman’s body is protected. Yet, nowhere in the Constitution does it mention the right to marital privacy. There are many flaws surrounding the verdict of Griswold v. Connecticut; not only constitutionally, but theologically and scientifically.

There were several landmark supreme court cases and laws before Citizens United that attempted to regulate campaign contributions. Political corruption can easily be caused by increased amounts of funds going to a candidate. A candidate will be more likely to benefit corporate interests because that will allow them to get more money later to help in reelection efforts. This becomes problematic because average citizens do not have the ability to donate large sums of money to a candidate. This makes the speech of large corporations worth far more than the average citizen. This can have a drastic impact on the marketplace of ideas. John Stuart Mills in his book, On Liberty, creates the marketplace of ideas. This marketplace consists of all speech being able to have equal weight and face

The Supreme Court also sited in that same ruling that, “In a free society by our Constitution, it is not the government, but the people-individually as citizens and candidates and collectively as associations and political committees-who must retain control over the quantity and range of debate on public issues in a political campaign” (Keena 6). While it may be a violation of freedom of speech to limit television ads, many of today’s candidates have made a mockery of the existing legislature regarding campaign financing. Ex-president Bill Clinton bent the rules and laws more than possibly any elected official ever, and certainly farther than anyone since Richard Nixon. Thad Cochran, a veteran Republican senator from Mississippi, stated, “Clinton used his own party and had it operated out of the campaign office, which was the White House, to coordinate expenditures by the Democratic Party and his election campaign in an unlimited amount, using soft money to pay for the ads, with his own chief-of-staff making the decisions about the kind of advertising, and Clinton himself was involved in writing some of the ads that were actually run by the Democratic Party using soft money” (Williams 10). No elected official had ever gone so far as to run soft money ads out of his own office, let alone rewrite the ads himself. It is cases such as this one that are prime examples for why there is such a need for new laws to govern campaign financing.

Abortion did not immediately engrave itself onto public agenda; it had help. The legal debate over the use of birth control proved to be the catalyst needed to propel abortion to the Supreme Court and into the ranks of public policy. The birth control movement was significant to Roe v. Wade because it served as a key in which to unlock the gates of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Courts decision to hear Griswold v. Connecticut, a case that challenged the Connecticut statute prohibiting anyone to “use any drug, article, or instrument to prevent conception or to give assistance or counsel in its use (p.39)”, is arguably the most significant factor in the Court’s

The idea of money in politics has always been a polarizing issue. For over one hundred years the discussion of individuals and corporations financing campaigns has led to a debate of corruption versus free speech. Is money in politics a corrupting influence that always leads to quid pro quo? Or, is it an issue of allowing individuals to use their money as an extension of their freedom of speech? Recently, campaign finance reform has been a very dynamic issue. With the last major supreme court case Citizens United v. FEC, money in politics has taken a significant turn from the status quo. With only seven years after the Citizens United ruling we can already see the effects of less regulated free speech in politics.

The right to privacy was not established as a constitutional doctrine until after the result of the Supreme Court ruling in the 1965 case of Griswold vs. Connecticut. The court decision was based on the interpretation of several amendments within the Bill of Rights. Although the Bill of Rights does not explicitly state anything about the right to privacy, a combination of its sections was used as the framework for establishing the right (“Griswold v. Connecticut (1965),” 2007).