ABSTRACT
Any consideration of the right to privacy must begin with Louis D. Brandeis. In a pioneering exposition, Brandeis, then a young legal scholar, asserted in the 1890 Harvard Law Review that the right to privacy means fundamentally "the right to be let alone." William Rehnquist held that because the police had not invaded any area traditionally regarded as private, such as "matters related to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, and child rearing and education," there had been no constitutional violation of the right to privacy. The Court's most expansive interpretations of the right to personal autonomy have come in the areas of sexual behavior and same-sex marriage. The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity.
