I’m a law talkin’ guy,
I speak in “terms of art”.
Non lawyers list’n in awe,
can’t even understand my fart.
The Ninth Amendment says in full:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
How can that be read other than to say there are other rights held by the people which are not listed in the Constitution. And if the rights are held by the people they cannot be unduly restricted by the states or the federal government. Now as these nebulous rights are explicitly not enumerated who says what they are. It seems to me the only answer is the legal system and in particular the Supreme Court which are the institutions that do interpret the Constitution.
I really can’t understand the argument that the Supreme Court, in particular, can’t tell us that people have some particular right even though it’s never been enforced before. It seems to me that the Ninth Amendment says there are such rights, and I see no other way that they can be protected for the people from infringement by the governments.
I will say the commas are badly placed in that amendment. There should be none at all.
I’m afraid it is so much that people are upset that school-sponsored prayer is prohibited.
That’s covered by the Tenth Amendment, which says that [ul][li]Unless some power is explicitly granted to the government, it is retained by the states or the people. []The power of recognizing previously unenumerated rights is not explicitly granted to the federal government. []The Supreme Court is part of the federal government.[*]Ergo, the power to enumerate rights belongs to the states or the people, not the Supreme Court.[/ul][/li]Regards,
Shodan
I don’t think that poll question is nearly explicit enough to distinguish between kids saying prayers for themselves and teachers leading everyone in prayer.
It’s not exactly the same, but it says “spoken” and “every day”. I think that’s close enough. This is not the “now it’s time for a moment of silence” that some schools do. And note that “Three-quarters of Americans (75%) support allowing students to say prayers at school graduation ceremonies [as part of the official ceremony]”.
Wow. Right up there with “Do you still beat your wife?” :smack:
I asked you before: if you’re going to stick your hand up my backside to make my mouth move, treat me to dinner and a movie first. I’m not That Kind of A Boy. 
You forgot one point:
[ul]
[li]The federal government is superior to state governments.[/li][/ul]
No the Ninth Amendment explicitly says these unenumerated rights are “retained by the people.” Which as you point out in the Tenth Amendment means they are some of the rights “retained by the people” These are not rights that belong to the States. So the question remains. Who protects the people from the states usurping them?
There can be prayers at official ceremonies. Kids can speak prayers every day.
That’s the problem: the constitutional details are too subtle for most non-experts. I wouldn’t trust any poll results that don’t specifically compare the two options.
Why aren’t those rights you speak of held by the states? Why aren’t the state courts the correct venues for discerning them?
The political partisan in me kind of hopes for a reversing of Roe v Wade, since I think it would enormously energize Democratic voters, and possibly motivate a significant number of pro-choice conservatives to vote Democrat in the next election.
But the moral person in me is horrified by the potential loss of choice and control of their bodies for women.
I’ve thought just the same.
Which is a big part of the reason it won’t happen, IMO.
The moral person in me rejoices at the thought of unborn children saved from gruesome death.
Because the Ninth Amendment refers to unenumerated rights “retained by the people.” Therefore, it was recognized there are probably some rights which are retained by the people and not the states. What they are I don’t know, you don’t know, and no on knows until the courts tells us what they are, because no one else can. Once they do tell us, those are rights that belong to the people an the states cannot restrict them.
Now you may think that’s a strange or silly way to set things up, but I believe it was explicitly done that way. When they wrote the Bill of Rights, they assumed things would come along in the future they had not envisioned. If they had envisioned them, they’d have named them explicitly like in the other parts of the Bill of Rights. I don’t really see how to interpret the Ninth Amendment in any other way than: We expect things to change in the future and there will be rights just as fundamental as those we’ve outlined here, and those too are rights of the people, we’ll let you know when it’s figured out.
Assuming you mean “no one knows until the federal courts tells us what they are…” what’s your explanation for the Tenth Amendment:
Doesn’t that mean, according to your own reading, that the power to determine these unknown rights is a power NOT delegated to the United States by the Constitution, and so that power is reserved to the States respectively, or to the people?
The people, of course, being the ultimate source of sovereignty to pass laws protecting their future rights.
Yes, the rights are retained by the people. But it is not determined what those other rights are, because (as you correctly state) they are not enumerated in the Constitution. The power of enumerating rights is not explicitly assigned to the federal government, therefore it is retained by the states or the people.
The right to have an abortion, for instance, isn’t in the Constitution, and not even the Justices who made up the right pretended that it was. It is not an enumerated right. Maybe it is one of the unenumerated rights mentioned in the Ninth Amendment. Who has the power to decide that it is, or isn’t? The Tenth Amendment gives us the answer - the states, or the people.
The question is, who protects the people from the federal government usurping their rights when the Supreme Court makes things up and violates the Tenth Amendment? Conservatives, who try to get textualist justices appointed to the Supreme Court.
Regards,
Shodan
In the current climate, this is absolutely correct.
But I write again to emphasize that this is not a natural consequence of conservative positions. In 1905, the progressive legislation in New York that attempted to set a limit on the number of hours bakers could be forced to work per day by their employers was overturned by a Supreme Court that crafted their own idea of a “right,” out of thin air: the “right to contract,” was supposedly rooted in the Due Process Clause.
So the danger is judges who feel as though their role is to help shape the direction and substance of the law, no matter what their desired outcomes are.
It’s absolutely true that today, there is a strong correlation between the conservative political view and the textualist judicial philosophy, but that linkage is not carved from granite. We should emphasize that the principled opposition here is to the idea that judges are the correct source of any substantive law, even if that substantive law were to further a conservative position.
What about conservatives who have read down the Treaty clause of the US Constitution, because they don’t like the text of the treaty? Like some guy named Bricker