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

It is tempting to pretend that minorities on death row share a fate in no way connected to our own, that our treatment of them sounds no echoes beyond the chambers in which they die. Such an illusion is ultimately corrosive, for the reverberations of injustice are not so easily confined.

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.

Law cannot stand aside from the social changes around it.

If the right to privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion.

The law is not an end in itself, nor does it provide ends. It is preeminently a means to serve what we think is right.

Sex and obscenity are not synonymous. Obscene material is material which deals with sex in a manner appealing to prurient interest.