Sketch of Catherine G. Roraback, the attorney who represented Dr. C. Lee Buxton and Estelle Griswold in Griswold v. Connecticut – Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Used through a CC BY-SA 2.0 license.
Catherine G. Roraback (1920-2007)
A lawyer who successfully tried a number of high-profile cases in Connecticut (including the New Haven Black Panther murder trial of 1971), Catherine Roraback is perhaps most famous for her fight in favor of the constitutional right to privacy. Taking over her family’s practice in Canaan in 1955, Roraback challenged an 1879 Connecticut law that prohibited the prescription and use of contraceptives. In the 1965 case of Griswold v. Connecticut, Roraback successfully argued that the Connecticut contraceptive ban violated the right of marital privacy guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. Her victory became the foundation for such important later decisions as Lawrence v. Texas and Roe v. Wade.
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Taking on the State: Griswold v. Connecticut
In the 1960s, Estelle Griswold challenged Connecticut's restrictive birth control law, making it all the way to the Supreme Court. …[more]
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“Finding Aid to the Catherine Roraback Collection of Ericka Huggins Papers.” 2016. Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/11/resources/996 (March 12, 2014).
“Catherine Roraback.” 2017. Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame. https://www.cwhf.org/inductees/catherine-roraback (March 12, 2014).
“Griswold V. Connecticut - 381 U.S. 479.” 2014. Cornell University Law School | Legal Information Institute. http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/381/479 (March 12, 2014).
YouTube -Catherine Roraback Tribute Film. 2014. http://youtu.be/CPWAh-TuXd4 (March 12, 2014).
Hevesi, Dennis. 2007. “Catherine Roraback, 87, Influential Lawyer, Dies.” The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/20/nyregion/20roraback.html (March 12, 2014).
Johnson, John W. 2005. Griswold V. Connecticut: Birth Control and the Constitutional Right of Privacy. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.
