In June 2003 the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a landmark ruling that decriminalized consensual sodomy. Lawrence and Garner v. Texas protected the liberty to engage in “certain intimate conduct” as a dimension of a person’s privacy and autonomy. Justice Kennedy, writing for the 6-3 majority, expounds on the constitutional meaning of liberty. He begins with the tenets of classical liberalism, that the state recognizes and makes visible the “dwelling,” the “home,” and “other private places” to protect “persons” from the state’s own intrusive policing. And then Kennedy argues that this liberty and freedom “extends beyond spatial bounds. Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct. The instant case involves liberty of the person both in its spatial and more transcendent dimensions.”1
