Justice Harlan stated the question before the Court: “Is this statute . . . inconsistent with the liberty which the Constitution of the United States secures to every person against deprivation by the State?”2(p25) Harlan confirmed that the Constitution protects individual liberty and that liberty is not “an absolute right in each person to be, in all times and in all circumstances, wholly free from restraint”:
There is, of course, a sphere within which the individual may assert the supremacy of his own will and rightfully dispute the authority of any human government, especially of any free government existing under a written constitution. But it is equally true that in every well-ordered society charged with the duty of conserving the safety of its members the rights of the individual in respect of his liberty may at times, under the pressure of great dangers, be subjected to such restraint, to be enforced by reasonable regulations, as the safety of the general public may demand.2(p29)