process can be summarized as making sure that the government treats people fairly. Part of fairness is giving 
people fair warning as to what behaviors are permitted and what behaviors are not permitted—putting 
people on notice of what the law is. Thus, legislators must be very careful when making new laws. 
They cannot make laws that are so poorly drafted such that a person of ordinary intelligence would not 
understand the law or that would allow police too much discretion in how they will interpret and apply 
the law because such a law would be considered void for vagueness. 
The Fourteenth Amendment also guarantees equal protection of the law. Generally, legislatures cannot 
make laws that treat people differently unless the laws are rationally related to a legitimate government 
interest. When legislatures attempt to pass laws that treat people differently based on sex, then the 
court reviews the law with heightened scrutiny —  the law must be designed to achieve an important 
government interest and the differential treatment must be based on an actual physiological difference 
between the sexes and not based on archaic stereotypes. When legislatures attempt to pass laws that treat 
people differently based upon their race or ethnicity, then they have to have even a more compelling 
reason to do so, and even then, the courts, employing “strict scrutiny” are likely to declare such laws 
unconstitutional. 
Limitations Found in the “Penumbra” of the Constitution 
Sometimes the Constitution doesn’t explicitly state protection or right that the courts have nevertheless 
found to be inherent or found within the Constitution. Justice Douglas, writing the majority opinion in 
Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), stated 
“[The] . . .  specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those 
guarantees that help give them life and substance.  … Various guarantees create zones of privacy. The 
right of association contained in the penumbra of the First Amendment is one, as we have seen. The Third 
Amendment in its prohibition against the quartering of soldiers ‘in any house’ in time of peace without 
the consent of the owner is another facet of that privacy. The Fourth Amendment explicitly affirms the 
‘right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches 
and seizures.’ The Fifth Amendment in its Self-Incrimination Clause enables the citizen to create a zone 
of privacy which government may not force him to surrender to his detriment. The Ninth Amendment 
provides: ‘The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or 
disparage others retained by the people.’ 
The Fourth and Fifth Amendments were described  …  as protection against all governmental invasions 
‘of the sanctity of a man’s home and the privacies of life.’ We recently referred in Mapp  v.  Ohio, 367 U. S. 
643, 656, to the Fourth Amendment as creating a ‘right to privacy, no less important than any other right 
carefully and particularly reserved to the people.’ (Footnote omitted).” 381 U.S. at 484-485. 
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