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.

We current Justices read the Constitution in the only way that we can: as Twentieth Century Americans. We look to the history of the time of framing and to the intervening history of interpretation. But the ultimate question must be, what do the words of the text mean in our time. For 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.

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

No doubt, there are those who believe that judges - and particularly dissenting judges - write to hear themselves say, as it were, 'I, I, I.' And no doubt, there are also those who believe that judges are, like Joan Didion, primarily engaged in the writing of fiction. I cannot agree with either of those propositions.

There is no such thing as a false idea.

After each perceived security crisis ended, the United States has remorsefully realized that the abrogation of civil liberties was unnecessary.