Background Throughout the more than two centuries since the ratification of the US Constitution, there have been “schools” of thinking about how it should be interpreted. In other words, groups of political thinkers and judges have tried to think of principles that should guide judges as they exercise this great power to interpret, or say whether a law conforms with, the US Constitution. More conservative judges tend to argue that the text of the Constitution and the previous legal decisions of the Court, or precedents, are the only things that should guide decisions. More liberal judges argue that one can not literally apply the text of the Constitution to modern cases. There is so much happening now that the Framers did not discuss or could have possibly anticipated. Thus, one must take into account broader issues when interpreting. The Constitution must be allowed to evolve with the times, and the Court must consider the public good in their interpretations. One court case in particular highlighted the debate of original and evolving meaning in the interpretation of the Constitution -- Griswold v. Connecticut (1965). The state of Connecticut had a law from 1879 that prohibited couples, even married couples, from using contraceptives and physicians from prescribing them. Estelle Griswold opened a Planned Parenthood clinic in Connecticut which offered contraceptive devices to women. It was promptly shut down. She appealed to the US Supreme Court and won the right to distribute contraceptives. The majority of judges, 7-2, argued in their opinions that the women who received the contraceptives had a “right to marital privacy.” While the word “privacy” does not appear in the Constitution, the majority argued that the penumbra, the shadow cast or the implied meanings, in the 9th Amendment, as well as other parts of the Constitution, protected people in their persons (and in their marital intimacy) from state intrusion, something Connecticut had done with this law. The minority judges responded that the majority was simply making up law. The opinions of the justices in Griswold demonstrate the constant debate of original and evolving meaning in the US Constitution. Source Source 1: Justice William O. Douglas, Majority Opinion “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…. 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, enabl.