Tracing an Inferred Right

An inferred right is traced by asking, at each step, what the Court said the right covered and what it left to legislatures.

Take privacy across four decisions. First, *Griswold* in 1965: the Court reads privacy out of several amendments together and strikes a contraception ban — the right now exists, though no clause names it. Second, *Roe* in 1973: the Court extends that right to the decision to end a pregnancy and sets a trimester framework, so the right widens. Third, *Casey* in 1992: the framework goes, the undue burden test arrives, and restrictions before viability stand unless they place a substantial obstacle — the right survives while its test changes. Fourth, *Dobbs* in 2022: the Court holds the Constitution confers no such right and returns the question to elected legislatures, so the right contracts to nothing at the federal level while other privacy applications, *Lawrence* among them, remain. Read the four together and the pattern is the lesson.