Sometimes a seemingly concrete comparison implies a more complicated set of concerns about social meanings, dangers, and balance of norms such as privacy and law and order. Thus, at the oral argument in Bowers v. Hardwick, Justice Powell asked Professor Laurence Tribe, lawyer for Michael Hardwick, who challenged the statute criminalizing adult consensual sodomy in the home this question: " Would you distinguish the home between [sic] the back of an automobile?" May It Please the Court, transcript, p. 367.