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Privacy - Civics
As part of a small group, you are going to work on writing an amendment to the Constitution. The topic is privacy. You may consider precedents such as Griswold v. Ct, Lawrence v. Texas, and Roe v. Wade.
The question you have to consider is this:
“How far should we protect privacy for the American people?” Should it extend
To the bedroom of married couples?
To gay rights?
To abortion?
To pornography?
To Birth Control?
To adultery?
Internet use
E-mail monitoring
Domestic surveillance
Wiretaps
Sexual practices
Drug Testing
Communicable Disease
Grades
Parental Consent
Your tasks are:
1. Day 1 - Read the above editorial and recent Supreme Court cases.
2. Day 1 - Research Griswold v. CT, amendments cited in the case, and other privacy cases as underlying rights to privacy.
3. Day 2 - Research national attitudes to privacy issues using the public opinion websites listed in class.
4. Day 2 - Identify those rights to privacy that you feel should be clarified in a constitutional amendment. Design a survey to measure public opinion in CHS towards your privacy issue(s)
HW - Conduct a local opinion/attitude survey in the CHS community
5. Day 3 - Draft your amendment
6. Day 4 - Present your amendment to the class
What you will hand in:
1. A 1-2 page explanation of your work, outlining your research and including an explanation of your survey methods and results. How did you use these to draft your amendment?
Why did you select your issue/
What did national survey data tell you about attitudes towards your position?
Justify your survey design. What were its strengths and weaknesses?
How did you use this information in drafting your amendment?
How do you think your issue will evolve in the future (say 10-20 years)?
2. A properly formatted amendment
The group should divide tasks. One person will be the coordinator. One person will be in charge of writing the amendment. One person will be responsible for gauging attitudes on privacy. One person will type the whole report for the group. Tasks may require you help one another at different times.
You will be graded on:
1. The Amendment - 50 points. Is the amendment written with effective content? Does it have a clear purpose? Are usages and mechanics correct? Does it illustrate understanding of the issue?
2. The process review - 50 points. Did you gather real data? Discuss your methods. How did you use this data?? Are you clear about strengths and weaknesses of your method?
3. Presentation and justification of your proposal in the oral presentations – 25 points
4. Survey design - 25 pts.
5. Include your names and tasks on the typed page.
Measuring Public Opinion
A. National Data
http://www.ciser.cornell.edu/info/polls.shtml
1. Review Data
2. Summarize relevant findings
3. cite sources
4. Data MUST be used in justifying amendment
B. Local opinions/community views
1. Sample
a. Choose your sample set
b. Choose your method of generating sample
c. Must be representative & random
2. Survey
a. What do you want your questions to measure?
b. How will your questions relate to the national survey data?
c. How will you measure degrees of views?
d. You must gather respondent demographic data and maintain confidentiality (m/f, grade, religion, ethnicity, NO NAMES, etc.)
New York Times November 16, 2005
Can I Get a Little Privacy?
By DAN SAVAGE
WILL Estelle Griswold ever be able to rest in peace? Although she died in 1981, the poor woman gets kicked up and down the block whenever someone is nominated to a seat on the United States Supreme Court. But few people remember who Griswold was or what she did.
In 1961, Griswold, the executive director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, opened a birth-control clinic in New Haven. She was promptly arrested for dispensing contraceptives to a married couple and was eventually convicted and fined $100. She appealed, and when her case reached the Supreme Court in 1965, seven of nine justices voted to overturn the conviction, striking down Connecticut's law against selling birth control (effectively overturning similar laws in other states). Americans, the court ruled, had a fundamental right to privacy.
Much of American jurisprudence since then flows from Griswold - including Roe v. Wade, which found that women had a right to abortion, and Lawrence v. Texas of 2003, which found that the right to privacy prevents the government from banning sodomy, gay and straight.
Problematically, however, a right to privacy is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution. The majority in Griswold held that it was among the unenumerated rights implied by the Constitution's "penumbras" (which sound like something a sodomy law might keep you away from). The Griswold case didn't settle the matter, and the right to privacy quickly became the Tinkerbell of constitutional rights: clap your hands if you believe.
Liberals clap. We love the right to privacy because we believe adults should have access to birth control, abortion services and pornography as well as the right to engage in gay sex. Social conservatives hate the right to privacy for the very same reason, as they seek to regulate private behaviors from access to birth control to masturbation. (Think I'm kidding about masturbation? In Justice Antonin Scalia's dissent in Lawrence v. Texas, he wrote that the majority's decision called into question the legality of state laws against "masturbation, adultery, fornication.")
And now, with three Supreme Court nominees in three months, the issue is again on the front burner. In the 1980's, Chief Justice John Roberts was a Reagan administration aide who wrote a memo questioning the "so-called" right to privacy. During his confirmation hearings the press-release brigade at People for the American Way warned that these documents suggested that he believed that the Constitution did not guarantee a right to privacy.
In his hearings, when asked if he could a locate a right to privacy in the Constitution, Judge Roberts said that he could - but he was vague about what it actually covered. Heterosexual married couples have a right to use birth control, he conceded, but that was about as far as he was willing to go.
During her brief but thoroughly entertaining tenure as a Supreme Court nominee, Harriet Miers bumbled into a "he said, she said" dispute with the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Arlen Specter. According to Senator Specter, Ms. Miers told him in a private meeting that the Griswold case was "rightly decided." The White House, however, denied that Ms. Miers had said any such thing, and later she said that Senator Specter had misunderstood her.
Now it is Samuel Alito's turn. Senator Specter says he believes the nominee accepts the idea of a constitutional right to privacy. But we can still count on Judge Alito to be grilled about Griswold during his confirmation hearings next month. Does he believe in a right to privacy or not? Can he locate it in the Constitution or not?
Well, if the right to privacy is so difficult for some people to locate in the Constitution, why don't we just stick it in there? Wouldn't that make it easier to find?
If the Republicans can propose a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, why can't the Democrats propose a right to privacy amendment? Making this implicit right explicit would forever end the debate about whether there is a right to privacy. And the debate over the bill would force Republicans who opposed it to explain why they don't think Americans deserve a right to privacy - which would alienate not only moderates, but also those libertarian, small-government conservatives who survive only in isolated pockets on the Eastern Seaboard and the American West.
Of course, passing a right to privacy amendment wouldn't end the debate over abortion - that argument would shift to the question of whether abortion fell under the amendment. But given the precedent of Roe, abortion rights would be on firmer ground than they are now.
So, come on, Democrats, go on the offensive - start working on a bill. Not only would enshrining the right to privacy in the Constitution secure a right that most Americans rightly believe they are already entitled to, it would also allow Estelle Griswold to finally rest in peace.
Dan Savage is the editor of The Stranger, a Seattle newsweekly.
Other Privacy Links:
• Communications Decency Act (Internet) http://www.epic.org/free_speech/CDA/
• Internet Privacy http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29974-2004Oct13.html
• Talking to Police http://usgovinfo.about.com/cs/mirandarights/a/privacycase.htm
• http://www.reproductiverights.org/tools/print_page.jsp
• http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29974-2004Oct13.html
• http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/99-8508.ZS.html Kyllo
• http://www.saveroe.com/policy/courtwatch/supreme-court/major-supreme-court-rulings
• http://www.aclu.org/privacy/spying/14888prs20030911.html GPS tracking
• http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/pr/94/940131Arc4473.html
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