4 ms·

Does the 1st Amendment say 'except for obscenity'? Does the 2nd say 'except for criminals'? We've long ago tossed out the Constitution and have since just bee

Does the 1st Amendment say 'except for obscenity'? Does the 2nd say 'except for criminals'? We've long ago tossed out the Constitution and have since just been playing pretend.

schoen 11y ago
The Supreme Court's interpretation of the first amendment has gotten much more protective of speech over the last couple of centuries.
rayiner 11y ago
Does the 4th amendment say anything about bits flowing through a wire? That doesn't fit into the literal definition of either "paper" or "effect." The Constitution also doesn't even contain the word "privacy." The whole concept was pulled out of someone's "penumbra." If we're playing the literal interpetation game, then the 4th amendment says nothing more than that the government needs a warrant to do what would for a private person amount to trespass to land or chattels. None of this mosaic theory malarkey.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  One of the objections to even adding the Bill of Rights was that it would be taken to limit rights to only those listed. The Bill of Rights and later amendments do not encompass all rights, thus things like privacy do not need to explicitly be listed to count as a right. My point was of the exact opposite. That the rights it clearly does list are still ignored and have holes punched in them until they look like Swiss cheese (just look at all the different sorts of gun bans in different areas).
  - rayiner 11y ago
    > The Bill of Rights and later amendments do not encompass all rights, thus things like privacy do not need to explicitly be listed to count as a right. Who decides what rights exist?
    - harryh 11y ago
      John Locke obviously! ;-)
    - FesterCluck 11y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_Amendment_to_the_United_...
      - tptacek 11y ago
        The 9th Amendment was infamously vestigial for most of US history. There were until the New Deal very few SCOTUS cases that even mentioned it, let alone turned on it. In the few cases in which appellants hoped to rely on a notion of "unenumerated yet extant rights", SCOTUS rejected the interpretation. History also doesn't do much to support an argument that the 9th hides a right to "privacy". The original drafts of the 9th Amendment weren't about unenumerated rights, but about state and local rights versus the power of the federal government. The language was bickered over, but apparently much of the jurisprudence of the 9th that happened anywhere close to the time of the founders was about devolution of state and local power. See for instance Hugo Black's dissent in Griswold: [The Ninth] Amendment was passed, not to broaden the powers of this Court or any other department of the [Federal Government], but as every student of history knows, to assure the people that the Constitution . ..was intended to limit the Federal Government to the powers granted expressly or by necessary implication. If any broad, unlimited power to hold laws unconstitutional because they offend what this Court conceives to be the "[collective] conscience of our people" is vested in this Court by the Ninth Amendment . . . , it was not given by the Framers, but rather has been bestowed on th[is] Court by th[is] Court.7
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]

Does the 1st Amendment say 'except for obscenity'? Does the 2nd say 'except for criminals'? We've long ago tossed out the Constitution and have since just been playing pretend.

schoen 11y ago

The Supreme Court's interpretation of the first amendment has gotten much more protective of speech over the last couple of centuries.

rayiner 11y ago

Does the 4th amendment say anything about bits flowing through a wire? That doesn't fit into the literal definition of either "paper" or "effect." The Constitution also doesn't even contain the word "privacy." The whole concept was pulled out of someone's "penumbra." If we're playing the literal interpetation game, then the 4th amendment says nothing more than that the government needs a warrant to do what would for a private person amount to trespass to land or chattels. None of this mosaic theory malarkey.

Lawtonfogle 11y ago
One of the objections to even adding the Bill of Rights was that it would be taken to limit rights to only those listed. The Bill of Rights and later amendments do not encompass all rights, thus things like privacy do not need to explicitly be listed to count as a right. My point was of the exact opposite. That the rights it clearly does list are still ignored and have holes punched in them until they look like Swiss cheese (just look at all the different sorts of gun bans in different areas).
- rayiner 11y ago
  > The Bill of Rights and later amendments do not encompass all rights, thus things like privacy do not need to explicitly be listed to count as a right. Who decides what rights exist?
  - harryh 11y ago
    John Locke obviously! ;-)
  - FesterCluck 11y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_Amendment_to_the_United_...
    - tptacek 11y ago
      The 9th Amendment was infamously vestigial for most of US history. There were until the New Deal very few SCOTUS cases that even mentioned it, let alone turned on it. In the few cases in which appellants hoped to rely on a notion of "unenumerated yet extant rights", SCOTUS rejected the interpretation. History also doesn't do much to support an argument that the 9th hides a right to "privacy". The original drafts of the 9th Amendment weren't about unenumerated rights, but about state and local rights versus the power of the federal government. The language was bickered over, but apparently much of the jurisprudence of the 9th that happened anywhere close to the time of the founders was about devolution of state and local power. See for instance Hugo Black's dissent in Griswold: [The Ninth] Amendment was passed, not to broaden the powers of this Court or any other department of the [Federal Government], but as every student of history knows, to assure the people that the Constitution . ..was intended to limit the Federal Government to the powers granted expressly or by necessary implication. If any broad, unlimited power to hold laws unconstitutional because they offend what this Court conceives to be the "[collective] conscience of our people" is vested in this Court by the Ninth Amendment . . . , it was not given by the Framers, but rather has been bestowed on th[is] Court by th[is] Court.7
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]