#9th amendment

From the May 18, 2022 opinion piece:

When the founding generation added the Bill of Rights to the Constitution in 1789, it was understood that no list of protected rights could possibly be exhaustive.... The Ninth Amendment, which provides that the “enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people,” codifies that essential idea.

The Constitution and Beto’s Question: A Libertarian Answer

A while ago, renowned Democrat and former Texas congressman, Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke, questioned the validity and relevance of the a document “set down 230-plus years ago.” That document was the Constitution of the United States. He was criticized for questioning the Constitution, the values, and principles on which the country was founded.

The question was, with the size of the American…

A Libertarian Defense of the Social Contract

I know, I’ve never signed the social contract either.

Now that that is out of the way, the real reason to defend the social contract is that it puts rights into a framework where they can be discussed and manipulated. Without an agreement, there are no rights in a literal sense; instead, there are any number of Platonic ideals which exist in the minds or philosophies of any number of different…

A judge who absurdly thinks her religion frees her from her ethical duty to remain unbiased.

If she wants to be unbiased, she can resign from being a judge. No one is forcing her onto the bench.

Her lawyer wrote, "There is nothing in the language of the Constitution that even remotely suggests that homosexual marriage is a constitutional right.”

This idea that the ONLY RIGHTS we we're guaranteed are specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights is fundamentally incorrect. There is, however, *plenty of language* suggesting we all have a right to be treated equally and fairly regardless of race, religion and, specifically "on the basis of sex." Saying you can't get married because you are a certain sex openly contradicts precedent.

The founders knew they couldn't possibly ennumerate every single human right, so they left that to future laws and common sense by the very wise ninth amendment:

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people".

i.e. "Just because we didn't list it, doesn't mean it's not a basic protected human right."

GOP has won majority of both houses in the Congress and a majority of 'conservative' judges sitting at the Supreme Court.

Has USA entered into a stage of officially lacking sufficient check and balances to retain seperation of the three powers?

In chapter 3 of the book Cancel Culture Curse: from rage to redemption in a world gone mad, crisis PR experts Evan Niersman and Mark Sachs recollected the philosophies of US' Founding Fathers regarding freedom of speech.

The Founding documents of USA embraced more than just the freedom of speech but more fundamentally freedom of individuals and the roles of the government.

Certain points brought out in the chapter are worthy for deep reflection. Unless the Americans can get back to the path of the visions of the Founding Fathers, the future of liberal democracy of USA will be critically endangered.

It is necessarily to explore the concept of freedom in the minds of the Founding Fathers 300 years and what are the meanings of such freedom in today's USA. Unless people clearly define the MOST IMPORTANT philosophical foundations that laid down the democratic system of USA, they can't understand why their current understandings had become something so different to what the original visions were in the eyes of the founding constitutionists.

The Founding Fathers, especially those who constructed the US Constitution believed in democratic government. They also understood that a government without any check and balance would lead to the dictation of violent mobs.

The Founding Fathers understood that the government of violent mobs could crush civil freedoms. It would create the problems of suppression of the rights of minority by the majority.

The Founding Fathers established a constitutional republican democracy to prevent authoritarian governments. The Constitution was created to establish a check and balance system via a complicate presidential election system and the Supreme Court in order to exclude the possibilities of purely ruled by majority (that can end up become governed by violent mobs).

The US government's powers were enumerated in the Constitution but the rights of citizens were NOT so. This kind of positive emueration of the government's powers was to avoid abuse of power by the government and to ensure that the Federal government's powers were restricted within the Constitution.

The purposes of the Bill of Rights were to restrict government's instrusion of invididuals' freedom. The 9th Amendment stipulated clearly that the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Sure enough, THAT'S EXACTLY what right-wing judges try to do. They try ignore common sense rights like, the right to bodily autonomy, the right to privacy, and the right to be safe from exploitation by corporations.

So the framers added the 9th amendment to the ORIGINAL TEN amendments (The Bill of Rights) to cover rights not specifically described ... yet:

Ninth amendment of the US Constitution -- Unenumerated Rights