The essay offers an interpretation of Justice Douglas's opinion in Griswold v. Connecticut as a Gnostic text.
Various guarantees create zones of privacy.
Read as a Gnostic writing, Griswold is the story of a failed effort to emanate the text of liberty, to realize publicly its hidden redemptive meaning and promise. The essay tests the adequacy of such a rescue attempt on Christian terms, and locates the effort within competing traditions in American constitutionalism.