Born in Boston,[1] Noonan entered Harvard University in 1944 and graduated summa cum laude two years later with a Bachelor of Arts in English.

[2][10] In 1961, Noonan was invited to join the faculty at the Notre Dame Law School by the Reverend Theodore Hesburgh.

[2] Noonan was appointed, largely on account of his book Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists (1965), as a historical consultant to the papal commission established by Pope Paul VI, whose recommendation to relax the ban on birth control was then overruled.

[12] Although Justice William O. Douglas initially ordered the Army not to ship out Negre, that stay was removed by the full U.S. Supreme Court on April 21, 1969.

[13] Noonan continued to file briefs, but, after hearing argument, the Supreme Court ruled against Negre in Gillette v. United States (1971).

[4] Noonan's former law clerks include United States District Judge Brian Morris,[16] former White House Chief Ethics Counsel and University of Minnesota Professor Richard Painter,[17] California Superior Court Judge Allison M. Danner,[18] University of Washington Professor Mary Fan,[19] Boston College Law School Professor Cathleen Kaveny,[20] NPR host Ailsa Chang,[21] poet and lawyer Monica Youn,[22] and Dean of Washington University School of Law Nancy Staudt.

In deciding whether anyone has a well-founded fear of persecution or is in danger of losing life or liberty because of a political opinion, one must continue to look at the person from the perspective of the persecutor.

The First Amendment does not authorize Congress to pick and choose the persons or the entities or the organizational forms that are free to exercise their religion.

A statute cannot subtract from their freedom.Our own law recognizes that for a substantial period of time a brutal man may subject women to severe psychological stress such that they failed to escape or cry out for help when in a public place because they lacked sufficient ego strength, self-confidence and willpower when they were in the threatening shadow of [the man's] complete domination over them.

The desire to have a good and kind way of forestalling them is understandably evident in the declarations of the plaintiffs and in the decision of the district court.

They pose the question whether the government may target poor, minority neighborhoods and seek to tempt their residents to commit crimes that might well result in their escape from poverty.

Instead, it sends a dangerous signal that courts will uphold law enforcement tactics even though their threat to values of equality, fairness, and liberty is unmistakable.