There is a certain pleasure at the Third Amendment Lawyers Association having been founded by a Connecticut attorney. As fans of the Third Amendment know, the only Supreme Court case to address the Third Amendment was Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965).
In that case, Estelle Griswold, then-Executive Director of the Planned Parenthood in New Haven, challenged her conviction as an accessory to having violated Conn.Gen.Stat., sec. 52-33, which provided: Any person who uses any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception shall be fined not less than fifty dollars or imprisoned not less than sixty days nor more than one year or be both fined and imprisoned. At page 484, Justice William O. Douglas, writing for the Supreme Court, specifically cited the Third Amendment as part of the "penumbra" of rights affording a constitutional right to privacy: The foregoing cases suggest that specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance. See Poe v. Ullman, 367 U.S. 497, 516-522 (dissenting opinion). Various guarantees create zones of privacy. The right of association contained in the penumbra of the First Amendment is one, as we have seen. The Third Amendment, in its prohibition against the quartering of soldiers "in any house" in time of peace without the consent of the owner, is another facet of that privacy. The Fourth Amendment explicitly affirms the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." The Fifth Amendment, in its Self-Incrimination Clause, enables the citizen to create a zone of privacy which government may not force him to surrender to his detriment. The Ninth Amendment provides: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." There are some who come to Connecticut and visit the Kelo house in New London (the house itself was never knocked down; it was moved). But hey, on the way to New London, stop in New Haven at 79 Trumbull Street, the location of that Planned Parenthood.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorJay Wolman is Counsel at Randazza Legal Group and the Founder of the Third Amendment Lawyers Association Archives
December 2016
Categories |