jan 1, 1986 - Bowers v. hardwick

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In response to what conservatives considered a liberal judicial revolution of the Warren Court, Richard Nixon came into the presidency promising to appoint “strict constructionists” — jurists with a preference for narrower interpretations of the law. In three short years, between 1969 and 1972, he was able to appoint four new justices to the Supreme Court, including the new chief justice, Warren Burger. Surprisingly, Burger and his new conservative colleagues did not seek to overturn the work of their predecessors. In fact, in Roe v. Wade the Burger Court (1969–1986) dismayed conservatives by extending the “right of privacy” developed under Warren to include women’s access to abortion. Other Burger Court decisions advanced women’s rights in the workplace. In 1976, the Court ruled that arbitrary distinctions based on sex in the workplace and other arenas were unconstitutional, and in 1986 that sexual harassment violated the Civil Rights Act.

In all of its rulings on privacy rights the Burger Court was reluctant to move ahead of public attitudes toward homosexuality. Gay men and lesbians still had no legal recourse if state laws prohibited same-sex relations. In a controversial 1986 case, Bowers v. Hardwick, the Supreme Court upheld a Georgia sodomy statute that criminalized homosexuality. The majority opinion held that homosexuality was contrary to “ordered liberty” and that extending sexual privacy to gays and lesbians “would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching.” Not until 2003 (Lawrence v. Texas) would the Court overturn that decision, extending the right to sexual privacy to all Americans.

The Burger Court’s rulings also helped to ratify the “law and order” politics embraced by many Americans in the years following the 1960s and gave it a reputation for centrist restraint. After initially striking down all existing capital punishment laws, in Furman v. Georgia (1972), the court subsequently restored them, in Gregg v. Georgia (1976). Rather than overturning the Warren Court’s rulings on the rights of suspected criminals (such as the 1966 decision in Miranda v. Arizona), which were deeply unpopular among conservatives, the Burger Court instead limited their reach. Stretching across four presidencies (Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan), the Burger Court quietly began to shift the court in a conservative direction, following the bold liberalism of the Warren Court.

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