The Supreme Court’s most controversial rulings dealt with the criminal justice system, religion, and private sexual practices, all of which involved liberal interpretations of the individual freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. Strengthening the rights of criminal defendants, the justices ruled in Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) that states had to provide indigents accused of felonies with an attorney, and in Miranda v. Arizona (1966) they ordered the police to advise suspects of their constitutional rights.

The Court also moved into new, controversial territory concerning school prayer, contraception, and pornography. In 1962 the Court outlawed a nondenominational Christian prayer recited in New York State schools as a violation of the separation of church and state guaranteed by the First Amendment. Three years later, in Griswold v. Connecticut, the justices struck down a state law that banned the sale of contraceptives because such laws, they contended, infringed on an individual’s right to privacy. In a 1966 case reversing Massachusetts’s ban of an erotic novel, the Supreme Court ruled that states could not prohibit what they deemed pornographic material unless it was “utterly without redeeming social value,” a standard that opened the door for the dissemination of sexually explicit books, magazines, and films. These verdicts unleashed a firestorm of criticism, especially from religious groups that accused the Warren Court of undermining traditional values of faith and decency.