Law and Society
Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) is a significant and highly controversial legal decision regarding Sodomy laws in which the U.S. Supreme Court by a 5-4 majority decision held that nothing in the Constitution "would extend a fundamental right to homosexuals to engage in acts of consensual sodomy." The decision meant that engaging in homosexual acts between consenting adults, even in the privacy of their homes, could be considered a criminal offence and the exercise of such law by certain states did not constitute a violation of one's fundamental rights or liberty under the Due Process Clause. The decision was incongruent with a number of court decisions on related matters and was widely considered to be a "mistake" by a number of jurists until it was finally struck down by the Supreme Court, 16 years later in Lawrence v Texas (2003). In this paper I shall discuss in the ways in which the decision in Bowers v Hardwick was flawed and not congruent with certain earlier decisions of the Court.
Briefly, the facts of Bowers v Hardwick reveal that Michael Hardwick was a bartender in a gay bar in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1982, a houseguest of Hardwick unknowingly let a police officer enter Hardwick's home. The officer went to the bedroom where Hardwick was engaged in oral sex with his partner. The men were arrested and charged with violating the Georgia statute that criminalizes sodomy. Charges were later dropped, but Hardwick brought the case forward in the Federal District Court with the purpose of having the sodomy law declared unconstitutional. The court ruled in favor of the defendants for the claimant's failure...
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