The Supreme Court case Poe et al. v. Ullman, State's Attorney in 1960 revolved around a Connecticut law that criminalized the use of contraceptives and the provision of information about contraception by doctors to their patients. The plaintiffs, including Paul and Thelma Buxton (a married couple) and Dr. C Lee Buxton (Paul’s doctor), challenged this law on grounds that it violated their Fourteenth Amendment rights to privacy in marital relations as well as interfered with a physician's right to practice medicine freely. However, the Supreme Court dismissed the case due to lack of actual controversy - since no one had been prosecuted under this statute for over eighty years, there was no immediate threat or injury suffered by these parties from enforcement of this law; hence they lacked standing to sue. This decision left open questions regarding constitutional protection for marital privacy which were later addressed in Griswold v. Connecticut where such laws were struck down.

In the dissenting opinion for Poe et al. v. Ullman, Justice John Marshall Harlan II argued that the case was ripe for adjudication and should not have been dismissed on grounds of prematurity or lack of a real controversy. He contended that Connecticut's anti-contraceptive statute had created an immediate and significant impact on marital privacy, thus constituting a present injury to plaintiffs who were forced to either risk prosecution or forego use of contraceptives entirely. Harlan also disagreed with the majority's reliance on potential future enforcement as a prerequisite for judicial review, asserting instead that constitutional rights should be protected from chilling effects caused by potentially unconstitutional laws regardless of their current enforcement status. Furthermore, he criticized the court’s refusal to rule as abdication of its duty and warned against over-reliance on legislative solutions in matters involving fundamental liberties.