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That's not true. The ninth amendment reads: > The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retain

by 542458 11y ago

That's not true. The ninth amendment reads: > The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. As such, it would be more accurate to say "Not ALL rights are not enumerated". Some are, some aren't. Those that are have traditionally proven harder to infringe. As such, it's not wrong to explicitly codify a right to privacy in the constitution in order to remove all ambiguity.

jakeogh 11y ago
It is true. The text you cite is pointing out that rights are rights, enumerated or not. Just because some right happens to be enumerated somewhere does not change the fundamental property of rights that they are not something you must enumerate to have.
dragonwriter 11y ago
> As such, it would be more accurate to say "Not ALL rights are not enumerated". It would be even more accurate to say -- as regards the meaning of the Ninth Amendment -- that it means that not all rights applicable against the US federal government are enumerated in the Constitution, in that the omission of legal rights recognized prior to the Constitution are not extinguished by mere omission from the Constitution (they might be extinguished by conflicting with enumerated powers in the Constitution.) I'm not sure its really defensible to interpret the intended meaning of the Ninth Amendment to be that rights exist without being enumerated anywhere. (The closest the Constitution gets to that -- at least, as far as rights that the federal government can't encroach -- is in Amendment X, which does something like that, though its framed in terms of powers rather than rights, by expressly reserving all powers not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution.) Certainly, some of the same people who were involved in advocating for the Ninth Amendment had expressed the view in other contexts that rights exist independent of enumeration (e.g., in the Declaration of Independence.)
- 542458 11y ago
  So IANAL, but didn't Griswold v. Connecticut establish that some rights DO exist without being enumerated anywhere? Specifically, that the guarantees in the bill of rights have "penumbras" that imply other rights not explicitly stated in any text (and not necessarily in common practice before the establishment of the constitution), but rather implied by the spirit of the text as a whole.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > So IANAL, but didn't Griswold v. Connecticut establish that some rights DO exist without being enumerated anywhere? Not really, > Specifically, that the guarantees in the bill of rights have "penumbras" that imply other rights not explicitly stated in any text No, the ideas of "penumbras" and "emanations" in Griswold are not nonenumerated rights; they are the full scope of the meaning of particular enumerated rights and products of the combination of those enumerated rights, not rights that exist independent of enumeration.

by 542458 11y ago

jakeogh 11y ago

It is true. The text you cite is pointing out that rights are rights, enumerated or not. Just because some right happens to be enumerated somewhere does not change the fundamental property of rights that they are not something you must enumerate to have.

dragonwriter 11y ago

> As such, it would be more accurate to say "Not ALL rights are not enumerated". It would be even more accurate to say -- as regards the meaning of the Ninth Amendment -- that it means that not all rights applicable against the US federal government are enumerated in the Constitution, in that the omission of legal rights recognized prior to the Constitution are not extinguished by mere omission from the Constitution (they might be extinguished by conflicting with enumerated powers in the Constitution.) I'm not sure its really defensible to interpret the intended meaning of the Ninth Amendment to be that rights exist without being enumerated anywhere. (The closest the Constitution gets to that -- at least, as far as rights that the federal government can't encroach -- is in Amendment X, which does something like that, though its framed in terms of powers rather than rights, by expressly reserving all powers not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution.) Certainly, some of the same people who were involved in advocating for the Ninth Amendment had expressed the view in other contexts that rights exist independent of enumeration (e.g., in the Declaration of Independence.)

542458 11y ago
So IANAL, but didn't Griswold v. Connecticut establish that some rights DO exist without being enumerated anywhere? Specifically, that the guarantees in the bill of rights have "penumbras" that imply other rights not explicitly stated in any text (and not necessarily in common practice before the establishment of the constitution), but rather implied by the spirit of the text as a whole.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > So IANAL, but didn't Griswold v. Connecticut establish that some rights DO exist without being enumerated anywhere? Not really, > Specifically, that the guarantees in the bill of rights have "penumbras" that imply other rights not explicitly stated in any text No, the ideas of "penumbras" and "emanations" in Griswold are not nonenumerated rights; they are the full scope of the meaning of particular enumerated rights and products of the combination of those enumerated rights, not rights that exist independent of enumeration.