We current justices read the Constitution in the only way that we can: as 20th-century Americans.

Death is not only an unusually severe punishment, unusual in its pain, in its finality and in its enormity, but is serves no penal purpose more effectively than a less severe punishment.

No longer is the female destined solely for the home and the rearing of the family and only the male for the marketplace and the world of ideas.

The genius of the Constitution rests not in any static meaning it might have had in a world that is dead and gone, but in the adaptability of its great principles to cope with current problems and current needs.

The Framers of the Bill of Rights did not purport to 'create' rights. Rather, they designed the Bill of Rights to prohibit our Government from infringing rights and liberties presumed to be preexisting.

Congress acknowledged that society's accumulated myths and fears about disability and disease are as handicapping as are the physical limitations that flow from actual impairment.

We hold that the Constitution does not forbid the states minor intrusions into an individual's body under stringently limited conditions.