We current justices read the Constitution in the only way that we can: as 20th-century Americans.

We hold that the Constitution does not forbid the states minor intrusions into an individual's body under stringently limited conditions.

No longer is the female destined solely for the home and the rearing of the family and only the male for the marketplace and the world of ideas.

Death is not only an unusually severe punishment, unusual in its pain, in its finality and in its enormity, but is serves no penal purpose more effectively than a less severe punishment.

We look to the history of the time of framing and to the intervening history of interpretation. But the ultimate question must be, what do the words of the text mean in our time.

The Framers of the Bill of Rights did not purport to "create" rights. Rather, they designed the Bill of Rights to prohibit our Government from infringing rights and liberties presumed to be preexisting.