Ninth Amendment Quotes

Vlad made a mental note to amend the friend code: thou shalt not date the girl that thy best friend has a crush on...nor shalt thou try sticking thy best friend in the chest with a sharp hunk of wood.

here and there someone had slapped on long wicked hairs as thick as your fingers. Which weren’t that thick. I’m just amending here; your fingers are fine.

theory, the Ninth Amendment is more relevant than the First, Second or Fifth. “The rights listed in the Constitution shall not be used to deny any other rights retained by the people.

The Ninth Amendment, which is not often mentioned, was perfectly foresighted. It says the numeration of the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. So no future law could be made that would deny or trespass on rights already given to Americans.

Now they’d happily kill each other over who spilt whose beer. There’s more dead bodies in the streets now then there were at the first barracks massacre. You just see them lying around, dead, not of exposure either…just dead. Creeps me out. How is it at school?” “None of my friends want to kill each other,” said Nona. Then she amended: “I mean, they say it all the time, but they don’t really. None of the little kids have bit each other in weeks, and when they argue too much Hot Sauce says, Quiet, and they’re quiet.” “Hot Sauce is a girl with a future, so long as she gets a new name.

Lincoln eviscerated the U.S. Constitution. He illegally suspended the writ of habeas corpus; started the war without the consent of Congress; made mass arrests of tens of thousands of political dissenters (not spies) across the North without due process; declared martial law; confiscated private firearms; shut down hundreds of opposition newspapers; imprisoned their editors and owners; censored all telegraph communications; nationalized the railroads; invoked military conscription, yet another form of slavery; orchestrated the secession of West Virginia from Virginia without the consent of the latter, as required by the Constitution; denied the Southern states representative government while they were under federal occupation; ordered federal troops to interfere in elections in the Northern states; deported Democrat Clement L. Vallandigham, a congressional critic from Ohio, to the Confederacy; effectively nullified the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution; and more. All of this was supposedly justified by Lincoln’s novel theory that the Constitution had to be suspended, if not destroyed, in order to save it.

The fifth model is the federalism model. It is in some ways the flip side of the residual rights model. Here the Ninth Amendment works with the Tenth Amendment to limit the federal government to a narrow reading of its enumerated powers. Instead of fighting against a conclusion that the federal government has general, unenumerated powers, the federalism model has the Ninth Amendment fighting against a conclusion that the federal government has broad enumerated powers.50 In other words, it fights against pretty much exactly how the post–New Deal Supreme Court has interpreted the Commerce Clause, allowing just about any regulation that has anything to do with commerce of any kind, which is basically any regulation.

other “nonoriginalist” views of the Ninth Amendment so we have a better idea of how it is seen. One such view is that of Professor Laurence Tribe. He thinks the Ninth Amendment is important, but only as a reminder that the fact that a right is not enumerated is not a reason to conclude it is not constitutionality protected. In this way he is essentially in league with the originalist proponents of the individual rights model, although not entirely and only in a general sense. He argues that the Ninth Amendment does not itself protect rights, but prevents the argument that a right is not protected because it is not enumerated:

George Mason’s Lockean natural rights guarantee continued to be popular. Versions of it specifying its various expansive protections of the rights to pursue happiness and acquire property had been adopted by seven states by 1818.72 Therefore, by the early nineteenth century state constitutional drafters had learned to do two things: protect rights broadly through fairly open-ended constitutional language, and exempt rights out of the powers that the people extend to state governments.

For, read properly, the ninth amendment creates no rights at all. There are no “ninth amendment rights” in the sense in which there are, for example, first amendment rights or fourth amendment rights. That there are individual rights fully derivable from no single provision but implicit in several, or in the structure of the Bill of Rights as a whole, is a proposition implicit in the ninth amendment. But that amendment is not itself the fount of any such rights, and it in no way obviates the need to argue that the Constitution does indeed impose upon government the particular limitation for which the advocate contends.52 Thus the Ninth Amendment itself does not protect a right, but tells us not to not find a right in the Constitution just because it is not specifically enumerated. The right to privacy still needs some kind of constitutional hook, although that hook might be the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, for example, even though the clause does not mention “privacy.” In interpreting that clause, and other clauses, we should be mindful of their more expansive interpretations.

The sixth model, that of Professor McConnell, pays close attention to the use of the word “retained” in the Ninth Amendment. McConnell argues the Ninth was adopted with the backdrop of the state of nature theory of philosopher John Locke. Under Locke’s view—recognized as influential at the time of the American Revolution and the Constitution’s framing—people have “natural rights” in the state of nature, the theoretical mode of living before people ever came together to form a government and establish civil society.51 People discover that it benefits them to give up some of their rights in exchange for creating a government that will then allow them to live in greater security and achieve greater prosperity. Thus they form a society where they give up rights, such as the right to punish others for wronging them, and turn those rights over to their collective body, the government. But they by no means give up all natural rights. Those rights that they do not relinquish they “retain.

The first model of what the Ninth Amendment might have meant when it came into being is the state law rights model. Under this model, the Ninth Amendment simply tells us that rights enjoyed under state law “continue in force under the Constitution until modified or eliminated by state enactment, by federal preemption, or by a judicial determination of unconstitutionality.”43 The Ninth Amendment does not protect these rights from the federal government, it simply says the rights “continue in force” until changed or overridden. For example, state laws regulating the formation of contracts continue in force after the adoption of the Constitution, but might be pre-empted by federal legislation in the future.

The second model for the original meaning of the Ninth Amendment is the residual rights model. Here the Ninth Amendment prevents a specific argument: that Congress has broader powers than it otherwise would have if enumerated rights had not been placed in the Constitution.44 Under this view, it could be supposed, for example, that because there is a prohibition on violating the freedom of the press, that means Congress actually would have a power to regulate the freedom of the press if it were not for the First Amendment. This would then imply that Congress has additional, unenumerated powers. Under this model, however, the Ninth Amendment makes unavailable that particular argument.

The fourth model, the collective rights model, believes the amendment is a rule of construction that does protect rights, but collective rights of people in the states. A foremost example of such a collective right, put forward by Professor Akhil Amar, is the right of the people to alter or abolish their government.48 Another is the right of a state’s body politic to choose the policies it wants to adopt free from federal government interference.

Thus, to protect against any power being used to violate the rights in the declaration of rights, such rights-violating powers are expressly not delegated as part of those “general powers.” It is not simply that the constitution affirmatively protects those rights, but that the power to violate them is not given to the state government in the first place. This, in a sense, was an answer to Hamilton’s and the Federalists’ promise that enumerated powers would not infringe on rights: we will not only spell those rights out, but explain that those powers do not extend to those rights at all. Pennsylvania’s framers intended to hold up their liberties with a belt and pair of suspenders.

demonstrates a belief in popular sovereignty, something commonly held at the time of the U.S. Constitution’s adoption. This view of the legitimacy of government asserts that sovereignty did not reside in the federal or state governments, but ultimately in the people themselves.65 The people can delegate their sovereignty however they wish, either through enumerated powers (à la the federal government) or general powers (à la the states). They could also, presumably, delegate no powers to any government and live in complete anarchy.

The absolute latest date where judicial review became a generally recognized tool of government is 1803, with the famous case of Marbury v. Madison. There is an incorrect but popular notion, not so much among scholars but among lawyers and the general public, that judicial review was “invented” by Chief Justice John Marshall in that case.73 But the evidence demonstrates that judicial review in fact goes back earlier to at least the framing of the U.S. Constitution. And arguably, at least as an idea, back to inventive common law judges in England, especially Lord Edward Coke (pronounced “cook”).

The third model, the individual rights model, is that the Ninth Amendment tells us that just because there are enumerated rights in the Constitution does not mean that there are not other rights, and that those rights should not be “denied or disparaged” just because they are not enumerated.45 Those rights receive constitutional protection because if they did not they would be “denied or disparaged” simply because they were unenumerated.

In later unenumerated rights cases the Supreme Court has, for whatever reason, shied away from Justice Goldberg’s suggestion. That has not prevented it from using tests looking to “traditions” and the like for “fundamental rights” worthy of its protection, such as in famous unenumerated rights cases like Roe v. Wade (abortion), Troxel v. Granville (parents’ right to direct the upbringing of their children), or Lawrence v. Texas (right of same-sex intimate sexual conduct).59 But in none of those or related cases has it invoked the Ninth Amendment beyond, at best, a passing reference. Thus, Justice Goldberg’s undeveloped but interesting thoughts on the matter are the only more than transitory statements on the Ninth Amendment from the nation’s highest court.

Thus it could be argued that the Baby Tenth exempted out of the state’s general powers the broad rights that the Lockean provision protected, such as the right to pursue happiness.

convened) against domestic Violence. ARTICLE V The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of it's equal Suffrage in the Senate. ARTICLE VI All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, before the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation. This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding. The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States. ARTICLE VII The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same. Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth. In Witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names, Go. WASHINGTON— Presid. and deputy from Virginia New Hampshire John Langdon Nicholas Gilman Massachusetts Nathaniel Gorham Rufus King Connecticut Wm. Saml. Johnson Roger Sherman New York Alexander Hamilton New Jersey Wil: Livingston David Brearley Wm. Paterson Jona: Dayton Pennsylvania B Franklin Thomas Mifflin Robt Morris Geo. Clymer Thos FitzSimons Jared Ingersoll James Wilson Gouv Morris Delaware Geo: Read Gunning Bedford jun John Dickinson Richard Bassett Jaco: Broom Maryland James Mchenry

The desire to ground Reconstruction in the Constitution led to the passage of the most important amendment to the Constitution, to that point or since, and the single most significant act of the Thirty-Ninth Congress: the Fourteenth Amendment.

LA FAUTE DE L’ABBE MOURET’ was, with respect to the date of publication, the fourth volume of M. Zola’s ‘Rougon-Macquart’ series; but in the amended and final scheme of that great literary undertaking, it occupies the ninth place.

Right of the People." The first salient feature of the operative clause is that it codifies a "right of the people." The unamended Constitution and the Bill of Rights use the phrase "right of the people" two other times, in the First Amendment's Assembly-and-Petition Clause and in the Fourth Amendment's Search-and-Seizure Clause. The Ninth Amendment uses very similar terminology ("The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people"). All three of these instances unambiguously refer to individual rights, not "collective" rights, or rights that may be exercised only through participation in some corporate body.