The 14th is also important because some SC decisions apply doctrines, not the BoR, through the DP Clause and Equal Protection Clause, so in that respect the 14th is very important.
I’d say the 9th and 10th are most important in terms of laying a solid foundation, although they’re probably not dusted off much anymore in court, since our system is pretty mature.
Beyond that, I agree with many other posters who like the ones that establish rule of law and civil society.
The 9th Amendment has never been dusted off in court. SCOTUS has only mentioned it 36 times, and didn’t mention it at all before 1936. It’s basically a nullity; it’s only raised when the Court wants to justify a remedy.
In order from least to most, since that’s the easiest way for me to compile the list.
18th and 21st: In terms of the here and now, these have to be dead last because they literally have no affect today. We could take into account some of the historical ramifications, but it’s also been long enough that most of that really doesn’t have much affect anymore.
22nd: I’d argue that this amendment hasn’t really done anything. I think we’ve only had a president run for a third term twice, and only one president has served more than two, and all of that was before this amendment. Since then, of the presidents that theoretically could have run for a third term, they generally either didn’t want to, were too old or sick, or just plain wouldn’t have won.
20th: Meh… Negligible effect, but still more than an actual nothing and a theoretical nothing.
27th: Should theoretically be controlled by elections anyway. Even today with this amendment, I hear a lot of people complain about congressional benefits but not really voting for people promising to reduce them.
3rd: Theoretically important, so I rank it higher than it’s actual affect, which is pretty much zero since the military is so well funded. I also think part of it’s importance is it serves in part to provide a basis for certain property rights.
25th: Again theoretically important, but unlikely to have any real affect. We’d have plenty of Vice Presidents step up before it was passed, and even in times of war, it’s quite unlikely that we’d need to go further than that.
11th: This does have some affect, but doesn’t seem to come up all that often with more centralized government power.
12th: Yes, it was a mess before, but at the same time, especially today, other than a tie-break vote in the Senate, the Vice President doesn’t really have much real power. I suppose it would provide some potential extra check against the President to have the tie break for the other party and perhaps provide some greater incentive to impeach an opposite party president knowing your party would get power, but looking at how congress can’t get anything done, I don’t think this would really make things all that much worse.
17th: Less of a mess than the original presidential method, and I’m not really sure if it accomplishes much. It seems to sort of defeat the purpose of the Senate as representing the states and just creates an imbalanced extra representation of the people. I’m not sure just how much difference this would make in congress, but I’m sure it would have some, at least more than the 12th.
26th: The right to vote is important, but in practice a lot of 18-year-olds just can’t be bothered to care as much as other groups who have been granted suffrage.
10th and 9th: Theoretically perhaps the most important of all, but in reality, they are just too vague to have the intended impact. When things that seem like they ought to be at the state level because of the 10th can be justified by commerce or necessary and proper clauses, what’s the point?
23rd: More or less a suffrage for people living in DC. It obviously has some affect, but less than most of the other suffrage related amendments. Honestly, I’d rather have just had the representation essentially clumped in with Maryland, so they share those senators and get legit representation in congress too.
24th: Obviously a good idea, as poll taxes are intended to circumvent a lot of voting rights, but at the same time, as we see today, there are other methods of achieving voter suppression, so I’m not sure how effective this amendment actually is.
15th: This is a big deal and affects a pretty large number of people.
19th: As said upthread and I agree with, this is only more important than the 15th because it affects more people.
16th: Income tax is a huge deal, obviously, and affects most people, so it’s high on the list. At the same time it’s not higher because, without it, we’d just have some other tax system. Who knows what that would actually be.
13th: Obviously of great importance to end slavery, one of the great evils and great hypocrisies in our history. The reason it isn’t higher is because it’s long enough ago that it’s hard to see how much impact it had, since it was so long ago and we can’t be so sure how much longer it may have gone on without it. Even with it, former slaves weren’t really all that much better off because of a lot of other crap that wasn’t really fixed until the civil rights movement.
14th: I rate this lower than most because I think it’s scope is abused. However, it’s still the most important of the reconstruction amendments because it comes into play a lot more often for a lot more people than the others do. Again, though, I also think it’s impact at the time isn’t as substantial as it should have been, because, as I mentioned above, states were finding other ways to treat blacks as second class citizens until the civil rights movement.
7th: I consider all of the rights to everyone to be of the most importance, so all the rest are from the bill of rights. Some of these are really tough to rank, and it’s not that I think this one is unimportant, I just think the others are more important. I just think that civil cases aren’t as important as criminal cases or fundamental rights.
8th: This is obviously important, but at the same time, I think it’s less important than the 6th because the types of punishment kind of fall short if the whole method of finding people guilty is corrupt. So, in light of the 6th it seems more important, but without it, it has no meaning.
6th: This applies to criminal proceedings so I think it reaches farther than the 7th. It also ensures that people aren’t tried in secret. It provides a real check against a potential tyrannical government by the people themselves.
5th: Protection against double jeopardy and self-incrimination, as well as due process and eminent domain relate to trials but also to people as a whole. It codifies property rights too.
2nd: Like it or not, this amendment is a huge deal. Yes, a lot of it’s original intent isn’t clear and has changed over time. But even if it is insufficient and unnecessary to protect us against a tyrannical government, where to some extent the trial related amendments are intended to protect us, this goes a step farther in showing how important protecting ourselves against that is. And, at least today, it is also provides for self-protection. And provides some further basis for property rights. In short, it’s not just about the right to keep and bear arms, but the philosophy and ideals behind why it’s there.
4th: This is the biggest as far as defining property and privacy rights. Without this, all the trial rights, gun rights, protections against tyrannical government all accounts for squat. In short, I feel like this serves as a basis for pretty much all the other rights above. Chances are a lot of people have run into this, and even if not, it probably protects us from a ton of this sort of stuff we’d have without it.
1st: Hands down, the most important one. Not only does it cover a huge area, but it covers several of our most important rights. This amendment is the whole reason we have the rest of them. These are essentially the founding principals of our nation. Really, once we start having these rights reduced, that’s how we know we have a tyrannical government.
Try a hat.
3rd of 5, is that you?
The 3rd Amendment is unique, and should be the favorite of all law students, because there has never been any argument about what it means, and it has only been cited twice in the whole history of American legal cases, both times in “dictum” (not relied on for the holding of the case). Lee v. United States arose because Robert E. Lee’s estate at Arlington was used as a national military cemetary; he never said anything about it, but after he died his son raised the question whether some compensation was owing, which was a 5th Amendment case but the 3rd Amendment was mentioned tangentially. In Griswold v. Connecticut, striking down laws against contraception, it was thought to be particularly egregious that the law banned activity within the privacy of the home, and provisions singling out the home for special privacy protection were listed in a footnote, with the 3rd Amendment in there. Otherwise, it has never even come up.
I’d move the 10th Amendment to the top of the list. Of course, most folks don’t give a rat’s ass about state’s rights these days, but I think it is far more important than it’s given credit for.
And the 16th and 17th Amendments have been hugely damaging to our society, so I’ll put them at the end of the list.
The non-enumeration in the SCOTUS, of certain amendments, shall not be construed to deny or disparage rights retained by the people.
You missed Engblom v. Carey. Or did you mean to restrict it to SCOTUS cases?
Oh yes, everything should be free. There’s a free lunch and we’re going to eat it.
And why do we let the great unwashed elect their senators? By God, next thing they’ll want some say in the presidency, too.