Another way of saying we have the right to the orderly pursuit of happiness, which is a LIBERTY under the 14th AM.
I thought it was the Bernoulli Principle which allowed us to do that.
Bernoulli was a hell of a constitutional scholar in his spare time.
Why, because they’re big words? Let me ask you this: what Constitutional provision allows the Federal Government to impose criminal penalties for impeding delivery of US mail?
See 9th Amendment:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
All kinds of emanations and penumbras should be able to spring forth from that.
However, I have never seen the 9th cited in any discussion of constitutonal privacy matters.
I did read a blurb somewhere to the effect that the courts consider the 9th to be a “truism”,
and implying that it had no significant real consequence. INAL/J but if I were I think I might
be able to find some use for the 9th in defence of various peoples’ rights, including privacy rights.
Don’t blame me. I voted for Coanda Effect.
I was going to mention the 9th which was a compromise between those who wanted a BOR and those who feared that enumerating any rights would lead to infringement of any rights left out. As Madison put it:
- It has been objected also against a Bill of Rights, that, by enumerating particular exceptions to the grant of power, it would disparage those rights which were not placed in that enumeration; and it might follow by implication, that those rights which were not singled out, were intended to be assigned into the hands of the General Government, and were consequently insecure. This is one of the most plausible arguments I have ever heard against the admission of a bill of rights into this system; but, I conceive, that it may be guarded against. I have attempted it, as gentlemen may see by turning to the last clause of the fourth resolution.* (… which is what led to the Ninth.)