PENUMBRA, 2023

Deconstructed leather jacket, waxed cotton thread, common nails, charred dimensional lumber

In United States’ consitutional law, the penumbra includes a group of rights derived by implication from others explicitly protecteed by the Bill of Rights. In Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), Justice William Douglas stated that “specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by the emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance. Various guarantees create zones of privacy.” This method of interpreting the Constitution is known as the doctrine of substantive due process and it‘s most well known right is the unenumerated right to privacy. 

On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overruled both Roe v. Wade (1972) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992). The implied right to privacy guaranteed from these legal precendents also included the right to “be left alone,” or to be free of government scrutiny into one’s private beliefs and behavior. That right belongs to us no longer.

We are now living in the umbra, the darkest type of shadow.