That’s pretty much it. I stumbled into this debate with my girlfriend and her argument seemed to be, “I have nothing to hide, neither should anyone else. If you don’t want people knowing about it, don’t do it.” Its hard to find a need for RTP without grossing someone out.
Really? So you’d have no problem with the government making it illegal for you to use birth control? (Even if married, as was the case in Griswold v. Connecticut?)
[QUOTE=John Mace]
Does a right to privacy mean, for example, that you have a right to:
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Use (currenlty illegal) drugs in the privacy of your home?
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Engage in prostitution?
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Contract with someone to work for less than the minimum wage?
What’s PRIVATE about work, dude? :dubious:
[QUOTE=Evil Captor]
Personal affairs, not subject to government regulation. He’s making the “evils of substantive due process” argument regarding the “what does ‘privacy’ mean?” question.
And it is a valid question: where does the “private sphere” end and the “public sphere,” in which government may legitimately intervene, begin? Your right to privacy amendment would need to address that, or leave it up to the judgment of the Supremes.
If two people have the right to agree to have hot monkey sex with no government controls, do they have the right to agree to a pay-for-work arrangement without government controls? What if one has significantly more worldly power and authority than the other?
Can a utility charge what it damn well feels like with no government purview over its rates? After all, it’s a private contract, and you could get lines strung in from elsewhere, or build your own generator and tell 'em to go to Hell.
Where does “privacy” stop and “public welfare” begin? And why is that the proper point to draw the line? Questions that need resolving.
A simple contract between two people. Not unlike marriage. Two consenting adults.
The Right to Privacy is somewhat of a misnomier. It doesn’t actually protect your privacy in the way your thinking (I.e. keep people from keeping tabs on you). Rather it keeps the gov’t from making laws unless they can show that the law is in an area they have a valid interest.
But the FDA can only pull a medical procedure if they have what the courts decide is a good reason. If they want to stop botox injections becase studies show these endanger the lives of the recepiants, then they can do so. If they want to stop botox injections because the administration thinks that they’re vain, or icky, then the Right to Privacy could prevent them.
Marriage isn’t protected by the Right to Privacy. After all, gov’t interfering in marriage is the whole point of the SSM debate, gays want the gov’t to “interfere” in thier marriages in the same straight couples marriages are interefered with.
[QUOTE=treis]
And thus we stumble upon a constitutional amendment for the “right to privacy”. There simply is no consensus on a definition for “privacy” and each person will see different rights in it.
[QUOTE]
Exactly. “Privacy” is so vague as to be meaningless from a legal standpoint. What exactly would “right to privacy” mean that the government cannot do?
We don’t know that, and that’s what this debate is about. What IS the right to privacy? The SCOTUS has found a right to privacy in the constution that supports abortion and yet some regulation of abortion is still allowed.
What if I hire you to kill someone for less than minimum wage? A simple contract, etc. Doesn’t the law have SOME interest in these private contracts?
What if I hire you to kill someone for greater than minimum wage? The wage, no matter what it is, is not the issue.
See my post #16. IANAL, but even if I have the deffinition a bit off, I’m guessing your wrong to say it’s vaguely defined. It is the law after all, they’re all about defining things, I feel confident there’s an actual functional definition the courts use.
Some regulation of abortion is allowed in those areas where the court found the state had a legitimate interest (so fitting my deff of RtoP in post #16). For example, the Roe v Wade court found the state had an intrest in “potential human life” and so regulation of abortion post fetal viability was allowed. Also the state has an interest in protecting the mothers health, so regulating abortion to protect the health of the mother reamained constitutional.
Part of the problem with the so-called “right to privacy” is that it ended up being used very early in its nascent existence as part of the support for the Roe v. Wade decision. If it had addressed somewhat less controversial concepts (like it did in Griswold), it might have gained some life of its own. After Roe, no one on the bench wants to touch it with a ten-foot pole.
Then, it isn’t really a Right to Privacy, is it? More to the point, the way the courts have been going, there’s very little one can’t argue is in the govenrment’s “legitimate interest”. I despise laws which have extremely fuzzy borders. That’s much of why I can’t stand the jurisprudence coming out of the SCOTUS from the 60’s and 70’s. It wasn’t so much that rulings were liberal, but that they were often unclear and invited future legal disputes. I have a similar problem with the often nonsensical government ethics rules promulgated in the wake of Nixon, or some of the liability suits allowed in the 90’s.
In short, the law becomes a running game, where no one knows what thew law means, and hence, the law becomes mere opinion. That, in my opinion, is a vile and even blasphemous misuse of law. It becomes like the elastic clause, something the judges get up in their robes and publicly lie about so they can hand down a judgement they feel like.
I’ve often been amazed by the ability of so many judges to, with a straight face, tell the nation that the elastic clause does not, in fact, mean what it says, and that the government can, in fact, do exactly what it ssays the government cannot do.
If it isn’t a Right to Privacy, then it’s not anything being addressed in jurisprudence anyway, and the entire discussion is moot. If someone wishes to propose such an amendment, I might consider it. Otherwise, not.
It’s a right to privacy in the sense that it protects the individual from unjustified intrusion by the government.
And yet people have successfully argued that laws are unconstitutional becuase they are outside the gov’ts interest.
The rest of your post is an interesting debate, but I don’t see how it’s relavant to the OP. Another thread perhaps.
As to the OP, I don’t think we’ll see a Right to Privacy amendment, in the sense that I’m using it anyways, because it would pretty much reiterate the Due Process Clause. Indeed, my understanding is that the courts have moved away from using RtoP as a justification for rulings, prefering Due Process to say basically the same thing.
Why do I have the urge to respond to the both of you with the punchline from the old joke, “We’ve established that; we’re just haggling over the costs!”? 
The issue may be, under what terms may two persons contract privately to do something that the body politic does not deem a criminal act?
Smiling Bandit, in my religious-arguments experience, I find that there are “Bible-believing Christians” who are convinced that “How I read the Bible is the plain sense, the way it’s supposed to be understood; you guys (meaning me and others who believe as I do) are picking and choosing from it.” I’m detecting a real sense that your feeling is “how I read the Constitution is the right way, the plain sense, and anybody who disagrees with me is pulling his reasoning out of his ass.” I’d hasten to suggest that neither you nor my BBC friends are the final authorities on how it reads. (There was a thread a while ago on strict constructionism, in which I pointed out some abuses that would come from a strict textualism.) The sense to be given the elastic clause, the principles under which the due process and equal protection clauses are applied, etc., are what the Supreme Court says they are. Fortunately or unfortunately, as you prefer.
[QUOTE=Polycarp]
To steal a phrase or idea from someone else, the boundary is that tiny space between your fist and the other guy’s nose. If your behavior has a harmfull effect on anyone else, it falls under the public welfare. Dealing heavy drugs, shooting at the neighbors, etc. If it has no effect on anyone else, then it’s private and nobody should care.
Or, they may say they want the government to stop interfering in their personal business (the “outlawing” of SSM). Declaring something to be immoral, illegal, bad, is interference.
Everyone should have the right to do whatever legal activity they want in private, without intrusion or interference. They already do. If something ought to be legal (that isn’t), then tackle that issue. But “something I can do that involves only consenting adults that I can conduct without my neighbor seeing” does not, to me, equal “a private matter that in every single instance is exempt from legal interference.”
Would you permit a brothel to operate in your neighborhood, so long as they kept the shades drawn? Can someone operate an opium den, as long as they paint the windows black? I realize it’s a buzzword that people use to gauge one’s position on Roe v. Wade. So, nominees must tread lightly, but I needn’t: there is no constitutional right to privacy beyond limits like the 4th amendment, nor is there a need for one. More than that, I believe it would not be a constant talking point as well as a question for SC nominees except for a single decision that relies on it.
Ah, but what’s “legal”? If a law prohibits something with a clear constitutional guarantee (and there have been such laws passed), is breaking that presumably-unconstitutional law within the bounds here?
Suppose a policeman decides to enter your home and remain there, without a warrant or with an “illegal” warrant (one obtained under false pretenses)? So long as he commits no search or seizure while doing it, is he within legal bounds? He’s clearly not trespassed on your Fourth Amendment guarantees. Yet I’d expect that most people would feel their privacy had been invaded by his entry.
Prohibitions of activities that have a constitutional guarantee are, well, unconstitutonal. No need for an amendment here, right?
I’m no constitutional scholar, but a warrant-less police officer does not have any more right to be in your home uninvited than anybody else, correct? Isn’t my remedy to call the police (the irony! 
) to have him removed if he won’t leave my property as directed? Again, isn’t there an existing remedy without a constituitonal amendment? Isn’t my privacy already protected against such abuses?