# The Alina Habba Pit thread **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Tags:** trump\ **Created:** [January 11, 2024, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alina-habba-pit-thread/995965 "2024-01-11T17:05:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 22
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2024, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alina-habba-pit-thread/995965/421 "2024-04-28T17:05:23Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > IIs that why the ruling was so widely condemned by constitutional scholars, because it was so awesomely “legally correct”? Cite? As to the rest, I merely claim _that_ they got it “legally correct” — not _why_ they got it legally correct (and not _why_ their predecessors got it incorrect). But if you have an argument to make that it wasn’t, I’m of course listening. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2024, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alina-habba-pit-thread/995965/422 "2024-04-28T17:21:25Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > Cite? It’s really not that hard to Google “Dobbs ruling criticism” and look for reputable sources. This snippet from an abstract in _Nature Human Behavior_ gives a sense of it: > … perceived social norms shifted away from the ruling, meaning that individuals perceived greater public support for abortion. We argue that extensive coverage of opposition to overturning Roe v. Wade supported this shift. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization also caused large changes, polarized by party identification, in opinions about the Supreme Court. > [Effects of a US Supreme Court ruling to restrict abortion rights | Nature Human Behaviour](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01708-4) Or this: > **[Legal-Analysis-What-Dobbs-Got-Wrong-3.15.23.pdf](https://reproductiverights.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Legal-Analysis-What-Dobbs-Got-Wrong-3.15.23.pdf)** > > 600.36 KB Or this, from the American Bar Association: **[Unprecedented Precedent and Original Originalism: How the Supreme Court’s Decision in Dobbs Threatens Privacy and Free Speech Rights (americanbar.org)](https://www.americanbar.org/groups/communications_law/publications/communications_lawyer/2023-summer/unprecedented-precedent-and-original-originalism/)** Do those give you the impression that the _Dobbs_ decision was “legally correct”, yessiree Bob, no question about it? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2024, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alina-habba-pit-thread/995965/423 "2024-04-28T17:49:00Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > This snippet from an abstract in _Nature Human Behavior_ gives a sense of it: If it does, then after looking at your first one I’m a lot less interested in seeing the second and the third: _“… perceived social norms shifted away from the ruling, meaning that individuals perceived greater public support for abortion. We argue that extensive coverage of opposition to overturning Roe v. Wade supported this shift.”_ I ask you: _how is that relevant?_ If you’re talking about whether a Supreme Court decision of this sort is legally correct, I don’t expect you to lead off with a discussion of public support or social norms. I’d figure the answer to be correct, or incorrect, _regardless_ of public support and social norms. Are the other two like that — dwelling on questions of public support and social norms — or do they actually discuss whether (a) Roe was decided incorrectly, and whether (b) Dobbs involved accurately noting that Roe was decided incorrectly? ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2024, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alina-habba-pit-thread/995965/424 "2024-04-28T18:20:09Z")
First of all, the idea that a Supreme Court ruling is some sort of abstract academic exercise in mathematical theorems detached from reality is completely asinine. Throughout history Supreme Court rulings have necessarily reflected changing social norms on matters like slavery, voting rights, and many other such decisions including, notably, Roe v Wade in 1973 reflecting more enlightened social norms on women’s rights. That ruling stood for half a century not because it was wrong, but because it was right, and it’s no coincidence that the overturning of this deeply entrenched precedent coincided with the Court being packed with fucking lunatic right-wing ideologues. Secondly, fuck off with your disingenuousness. It takes about one second to glance at the titles of the other two cites and grasp what they’re about. The second one is about the unconscionable deprivation of women’s reproductive rights, and the third, a legal analysis from the ABA, discusses the significant and unanticipated implications of this asinine and totally political ruling on areas well beyond just reproductive rights, and indeed supports the reasons that Roe v Wade was decided in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2024, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alina-habba-pit-thread/995965/425 "2024-04-28T18:33:18Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Throughout history Supreme Court rulings have necessarily reflected changing social norms on matters like slavery, What are you talking about? I thought the whole point of the 13th Amendment was that there was no point in waiting for a Supreme Court ruling to get the job done (regardless of social norms), until the Constitution got so amended (at which point the Court was to apply _that,_ regardless of social norms). That the law and the social norms are _two separate things._ > [@](#): > > Secondly, fuck off with your disingenuousness. It takes about one second to glance at the titles of the other two cites and grasp what they’re about. The second one is about the unconscionable deprivation of women’s reproductive rights, and the third, Again: _what are you on about?_ Someone saying they find it to be unconscionable is like talking about “social norms” or “public support” — not about whether the decision was legally correct. Do you genuinely not get that a decision can be legally correct regardless of whether it goes _with_ or _against_ social norms? That it can be legally correct with or without having public support? ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2024, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alina-habba-pit-thread/995965/426 "2024-04-28T18:52:46Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > Do you genuinely not get that a decision can be legally correct regardless of whether it goes _with_ or _against_ social norms? Nice job ignoring my third cite, in which a member of the American Bar Association argues in essence that the ruling was legally **incorrect**. Take this, for example: > I argue that two approaches to constitutional adjudication taken by the Court in Dobbs could unsettle a number of important privacy and free speech principles that we have come to think of as established. In short, I maintain that in Dobbs, the Court took an unprecedented approach to precedent and an unhappily original approach to originalism. > > Let’s turn first to the view of precedent and stare decisis taken by the Dobbs Court. And let’s begin by putting Dobbs back into the context of a signal moment toward the end of the term in which it was decided. Over the course of three business days, the Court issued opinions involving three of the most divisive issues of our time: guns, abortion, and prayer in public schools. In every one of those cases, the Court cast aside longstanding law. > > In reversing Roe v. Wade, the Dobbs Court abandoned a precedent that had stood for almost half a century. The day before, in New York State Pistol and Rifle Association v. Bruen, the Court held that a New York State gun regulation that dated to the early 1900s violated the Second Amendment. Just a few days later, in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the Court held that a school district had violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment by firing a high school football coach for praying midfield after games. In doing so, the Court jettisoned the standard it adopted more than 50 years ago in Lemon v. Kurtzman. > > In sum, **between a Thursday and the following Monday, more than 200 years of law went by the wayside. That’s a lot of activity for a purportedly nonactivist Court.** Regardless, unlike you, I subscribe to the idea that courts are the ultimate guardians of the rights of society, and that “legally correct” is not some mathematical abstraction but must be a reflection of the rights and wishes of the people that the law serves. Which is exactly the **opposite** of what was done here. Whereas lunatic wingnuts – and heaven forfend I should imply that you’re among them – define “legally correct” as “a decision that I agree with, because my fellow wingnuts made a ruling that I like”. I would prefer to ask, what was the overriding impetus to throw out half a century or more of established precedent, and what societal interests does it serve? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2024, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alina-habba-pit-thread/995965/427 "2024-04-28T18:58:45Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Nice job ignoring my third cite, in which a member of the American Bar Association argues in essence that the ruling was legally **incorrect**. Take this, for example: Looks to be as worthless as the other two. The part you bolded says that “In sum, **between a Thursday and the following Monday, more than 200 years of law went by the wayside. That’s a lot of activity for a purportedly nonactivist Court.** ” My question is not whether they’re overruling previous decisions; I _know_ they’re overruling previous decisions. My whole point is that, with Dobbs, they overruled an _incorrect_ previous decision. And if Roe was incorrectly decided, I don’t give a tin shit about how many years it sat there before someone ruled that it was incorrect; I care _whether that was the correct call_. And if that’s so, then multiplying that is still multiplying by zero: how many decisions they’ve overruled is irrelevant, whether they’ve overruled _incorrect_ decisions is relevant. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2024, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alina-habba-pit-thread/995965/428 "2024-04-28T19:22:08Z")
Of course it’s “worthless” – it disagrees with your wingnut beliefs! 🙄 I’m sick of this pointless back and forth with you. I’ll just leave you with this, from an abstract of an article by a Cambridge scholar (**[the full article is available here](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-american-history/article/should-constitutional-rights-reflect-popular-opinion-interpreting-dobbs-v-jackson-womens-health-organization/009FBA02D5885AECE95B7510F992E0DF)**) which echoes almost exactly the reasoning in the article at the American Bar Association: > A line of Supreme Court decisions dating back to the 1920s recognized unenumerated liberties related to parenting, marriage, and contraception tied to the constitutional right to privacy. Almost half a century ago, in Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court declared that this constitutional right to privacy was broad enough to encompass the right to terminate a pregnancy. The Dobbs decision reversed Roe and disparaged the right to abortion in the strongest terms … > > … The _Dobbs_ decision, together with the chaos it has produced, raises critical questions about how other constitutional rights could be dismantled. The justices themselves debated what the decision meant for the fate of rights to same-sex marriage, individual intimacy, or contraception. It makes sense to consider how the doctrinal approach in _Dobbs_ naturally leads to the destruction of other constitutional liberties IOW, the only thing “legally correct” about this ruling is that far-right wingnuts and evangelical lunatics like it. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2024, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alina-habba-pit-thread/995965/429 "2024-04-28T19:23:07Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > I’m sick of this pointless back and forth with you. Don’t worry, everyone eventually gets there with that guy. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2024, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alina-habba-pit-thread/995965/430 "2024-04-28T19:41:59Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Of course it’s “worthless” – it disagrees with your wingnut beliefs! The Supreme Court looked at the Constitution and noted that it said _jack shit,_ one way or the other, about abortion — it says something about a minimum age requirement for the presidency, it says something about the right to a trial by jury, it says plenty of stuff about plenty of stuff, but not a _thing_ about this — and they declared, _accurately,_ that it was so. You can call that a wingnut belief, but: it’s as wingnutty as saying there’s a minimum age requirement for the presidency — or, if you prefer, as wingnutty as saying there _isn’t_ a maximum age requirement, given that the Constitution doesn’t, y’know, mention one — in that they looked at it, and saw what it said, and, as it were, _got it correct._ Your position is the opposite of that. It is, again, like insisting there’s a maximum age limit for the presidency: _it simply isn’t so_; it’s not written there — regardless of social norms or public support — and a court that says otherwise would be getting it egregiously wrong, as opposed to being legally correct, and should be overruled. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2024, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alina-habba-pit-thread/995965/431 "2024-04-28T19:42:45Z")
While he was still around and before defending the Trump era administration involved too much sophistry and contradiction, Bricker was a lot better about arguing the legal ins and outs. In these benighted times, that often involved picking the smallest of nits, but it rarely involved wholesale fantasy like we see here. This is just asinine. No matter what sort of justifications people trot out, the Supreme Court has always done what it wants at the moment. Nobody alive remembers Dred Scott, but that’s a pretty good example of a terrible decision. Instead of settling the question of slavery, it instead inflamed tensions and was a major factor in the runup to the Civil War. By defending indefensible SCOTUS rulings, our society is only weakened, potentially to the point of breaking, and justifiably made subject to the ridicule of future generations. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2024, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alina-habba-pit-thread/995965/432 "2024-04-28T19:44:46Z")
> [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > By defending indefensible SCOTUS rulings, our society is only weakened, potentially to the point of breaking, and justifiably made subject to the ridicule of future generations. That’s what I’d say about sticking up for Roe: the decision was egregiously wrong, the Supreme Court eventually said so, and there’s no reason to defend it now that it’s been correctly struck down. ---
**Author:** ![Stratocaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stratocaster/32/16393_2.png) [@Stratocaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stratocaster)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2024, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alina-habba-pit-thread/995965/433 "2024-04-28T20:52:30Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > The Supreme Court looked at the Constitution and noted that it said _jack shit,_ one way or the other, about abortion — it says something about a minimum age requirement for the presidency, it says something about the right to a trial by jury, it says plenty of stuff about plenty of stuff, but not a _thing_ about this — and they declared, _accurately,_ that it was so. A right needn’t be enumerated for it to exist. That’s why Madison needed the Ninth Amendment included. Madison argued that there are countless unenumerated rights, and they are not lesser than those enumerated. (He was initially against the BoR because of what naming rights implied about unnamed rights.) There’s no lack of rights and powers SCOTUS has recognized without explicit mention of the particulars in the Constitution. PACs, infrared searches, judicial review, the right to enslave black people—none of these things are explicit. The right to privacy and bodily autonomy are not concepts they conjured up in the lab. They are rights they recognized as fundamental and not to be unreasonably restricted. It’s the textualists who are on shakier ground. There is nothing in the Constitution that says only rights explicitly enumerated are real, or that only rights supported by “history and tradition” warrant protection. Quite the opposite— read the Ninth. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2024, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alina-habba-pit-thread/995965/434 "2024-04-28T21:16:11Z")
> [@Stratocaster](#): > > A right needn’t be enumerated for it to exist. That’s why Madison needed the Ninth Amendment included. Madison argued that there are countless unenumerated rights, and they are not lesser than those enumerated. But what does that tell us? You mention “the right to enslave black people” — prior to the Thirteenth Amendment, what did the Ninth mean in that regard? If a would-be slaveowner in a state that abolished slavery said he had an unenumerated Ninth Amendment “right to own black people” — what? If a slave in a state where slavery was legal said he had an unenumerated Ninth Amendment right to be free — what? As far as I can tell, the Ninth is a shield rather than a sword: it means that, yes, some rights being named isn’t meant to rule out the possibility of other rights — but it doesn’t actually enshrine any of those other rights. It means the whole reason for passing the Thirteenth Amendment was to remove the question from vicissitudes of public support and social norms, to remove it from a situation where one state could vote one way and another another — because, in the absence of the Thirteenth, the Ninth wouldn’t, _couldn’t,_ be used to answer that question with (a) the force of law and (b) a straight face. ---
**Author:** ![Stratocaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stratocaster/32/16393_2.png) [@Stratocaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stratocaster)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2024, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alina-habba-pit-thread/995965/435 "2024-04-28T21:26:34Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > But what does that tell us? You mention “the right to enslave black people” — prior to the Thirteenth Amendment, what did the Ninth mean in that regard? If a would-be slaveowner in a state that abolished slavery said he had an unenumerated Ninth Amendment “right to own black people” — what? If a slave in a state where slavery was legal said he had an unenumerated Ninth Amendment right to be free — what? See, this is where we’d need our Justices to be capable of mature, sober, complex thought. The textualists pretend they follow a scientific formula, without acknowledging there’s nothing in the Constitution that says “history and tradition” must rule the day, and certainly nothing that implies the Ninth is just window dressing. So, this is where logical, enlightened, clear-eyed jurists would conclude that the right to not be a victim of chattel slavery is a fundamental right that can’t be unreasonably restricted. And the right to own black people? Um, no. It requires them to actually acknowledge a previously unrecognized right, just as they have numerous times, and just as they have in resolving conflicting “rights” time and time again. ETA: Or, to channel Madison again, rights don’t exist because SCOTUS creates them. They are self-evident—God-given, if that’s your inclination. “But, but, then someone would need to exercise judgment to resolve such matters.” Such is life for mature adults. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2024, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alina-habba-pit-thread/995965/436 "2024-04-28T21:43:13Z")
> [@Stratocaster](#): > > So, there is where logical, enlightened, clear-eyed jurists would conclude that the right to not be a victim of chattel slavery is a fundamental right that can’t be unreasonably restricted. No, this is why the Thirteenth Amendment was passed: so we _wouldn’t_ need, in the context of slavery, for jurists to reach conclusions about what is and isn’t unreasonable and what is and isn’t fundamental — or look to public support, or social norms — because we just need them to look at the Constitution, and note what the Thirteenth Amendment says, and, well, that’s _it,_ for the clear-eyed logic required once the Thirteenth was put in place as the law of the land; the Court wasn’t asked to make something of the Ninth, but instead merely got handed the Thirteenth. Such is life for mature adults. ---
**Author:** ![Stratocaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stratocaster/32/16393_2.png) [@Stratocaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stratocaster)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2024, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alina-habba-pit-thread/995965/437 "2024-04-28T21:51:52Z")
The Thirteenth was required as a practical matter. Right or wrong, slavery was sanctioned. As a matter of fundamental rights, there was no need (again, this ignores the societal barriers). Think of it as similar to the BoR. Madison thought it was unnecessary and potentially misleading. If the Constitution had not been amended, the right to free expression, or free association, would still have existed, and with _exactly_ the same weight. Or do you disagree that the right to be free from chattel slavery is fundamental, whether or not it was recognized? Because if so, as an academic matter, the Thirteenth was unnecessary. As a practical matter, yeah, that bright line was needed. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2024, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alina-habba-pit-thread/995965/438 "2024-04-28T22:03:41Z")
> [@Stratocaster](#): > > As a practical matter, yeah, that bright line was needed. But my point is, as a practical matter, that bright line is _always_ needed. Take a more contemporary example: someone gets asked to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple, and says, ‘no, I don’t wanna, and I don’t _haveta,_ because I gotta right.’ And the would-be purchaser replies: ‘no, you do; I gotta right.’ Now, maybe they take each the time to spell out a claim about having an unenumerated Ninth Amendment right, and maybe they don’t, but my point is: to the best of my knowledge, a look at the Ninth isn’t going to settle this. It can’t be used to rule out either right, it says a look at the other Amendments shouldn’t be used to deny or disparage either way — but, as a practical matter, it doesn’t actually give a bright-line answer to the question; that’s for lawmakers, not for jurists. ---
**Author:** ![Stratocaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stratocaster/32/16393_2.png) [@Stratocaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stratocaster)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2024, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alina-habba-pit-thread/995965/439 "2024-04-28T22:09:22Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > But my point is, as a practical matter, that bright line is _always_ needed. Nope, it’s not. SCOTUS has recognized a number of unenumerated rights, rights with zero textual support. From wiki: > **[Unenumerated rights](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unenumerated_rights)** > > Unenumerated rights are legal rights inferred from other rights that are implied by existing laws, such as in written constitutions, but are not themselves expressly coded or "enumerated" within the explicit writ of the law. Alternative terminology sometimes used are: implied rights, natural rights, background rights, and fundamental rights. > Unenumerated rights may become enumerated rights if they necessitate the systematization of positively enumerated rights anywhere laws would become logicall... > [@](#): > > In the United States, the [Ninth Amendment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution) to the [U.S. Constitution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Constitution) protects against federal infringement of unenumerated rights. The text reads: > > > The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. > > The [Supreme Court of the United States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States) has also interpreted the [Fourteenth Amendment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution) to the [U.S. Constitution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Constitution) to protect against state infringement of certain unenumerated rights including, among others, the [right to send one’s children to private school](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierce_v._Society_of_Sisters) and the [right to marital privacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griswold_v._Connecticut). > > The Supreme Court has found that unenumerated rights include such important rights as the [right to travel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement), the [right to vote](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffrage), and the [right to keep personal matters private](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_privacy).[[4]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unenumerated_rights#cite_note-4) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2024, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alina-habba-pit-thread/995965/440 "2024-04-28T22:24:07Z")
> [@Stratocaster](#): > > From wiki: Your quote seems to cover two things: it mentions times when they’ve applied the Fourteenth Amendment, and then there’s the #4 item that, as far as I can tell, doesn’t actually link to what it says it does. If I’m wrong about the latter, then please let me know; but the fact that the former cites the Fourteenth seems to be the interesting part. Did they actually cite the Ninth? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alina-habba-pit-thread/995965.md?page=21) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-alina-habba-pit-thread/995965.md?page=23)