Many scholars have looked to the Amendment to answer the vexed question of what rights Americans have. In fact, though, the Amendment leaves that question for us to answer in our own time. To understand why this is so, we must begin by recognizing that James Madison faced a serious problem as he spoke to his colleagues in the House of Representatives about his proposed bill of rights.
On the one hand, he had to satisfy colleagues who worried that the enumeration of specific rights might by implication deny the existence of other rights. On the other hand, Madison faced a second argument that looked in the opposite direction. Many of his colleagues worried about additions to the Constitution that were vague and open ended.
Madison had to take both sets of objections seriously. At the time the House debated his proposals, two states remained outside the Union and other states plausibly threatened to convene a new constitutional convention if no action were taken. It was urgent that Congress act quickly and that congressional opposition be minimized.
It was therefore crucial that Madison satisfy both sides of the argument about unenumerated rights. He accomplished this goal with a brilliant compromise.
The Ninth Amendment clearly rebutted the possible presumption that enumeration of some rights precluded the recognition of others. But the Amendment does not establish these rights or say what they are. Thus, opponents of vague or underspecified rights could also be satisfied that the Constitution did not entrench the kind of rights that they opposed.
Proponents of nontextual rights could still argue that they should be enforced, and opponents of such rights could still argue that they did not exist. Neither side need oppose the rest of the Bill of Rights on the ground that its position on nontextual rights was jeopardized. This interpretation is strongly supported not just by what the Ninth Amendment says, but also by what it does not say. When states submitted proposed amendments to the new Constitution, some of them suggested changes that would have expressly protected natural and unenumerated rights.
Similarly, Madison and Sherman each proposed natural rights amendments, and a similar provision was proposed in the Senate. Congress adopted none of the state provisions, and the Madison, Sherman, and Senate proposals were all defeated.
To summarize, then, on five separate occasions, Congress was presented with provisions that would have expressly protected unenumerated rights, but it failed to adopt any of them. Of course, sometimes when language is left out of a document, it is omitted because it is redundant. If the Ninth Amendment clearly mandated the protection of natural rights, this might provide an explanation for the rejection of other natural rights language. But at very best, the Ninth Amendment protects natural rights by implication.
Those who favor the unenumerated rights view must explain why Congress would pass a measure that, at most, did indirectly precisely what it repeatedly refused to do directly. So where does this leave us today? The Ninth Amendment tells us that the existence of a written constitution should not be treated as an excuse for ignoring nontextual rights, but it also tells us that the advocates of these rights cannot rest on ancient constitutional text to establish their existence.
That is the general issue included in the Ninth Amendment. These rights can consist of the right to plant flowers, the right to paint your toenails, and the right to eat what you want, among many others.
The Anti-Federalists are the ones that insisted that the Bill of Rights be included in the Constitution. They feared that the federal government would take all the power and oppress other people. However, an essential portion of the original draft that Madison created was removed by a select committee.
It was to prohibit the federal government from expanding its power more using interpretation. This, in turn, made the whole application of the amendment and the purpose it was supposed to serve irrelevant. The federalists, on the other hand, believed that the Constitution limited the federal government.
The Constitution would also make other liberties lack the protection of their constitutional rights. This happened continuously ever since the Bill of Rights was enacted. For example, the Fourth Amendment recognizes the importance of privacy interests when it stipulates that because citizens. All the amendments affect my life in a way, but some are more important to me than others. The First Amendment has provided protection for my individual rights of speech, religion, assembly, press, and petition of government.
In my opinion, the First Amendment is the most important. As a journalist and successful newspaper writer, freedom of press and petition of government are rights. Fourth and Ninth Amendments. The fourth amendment embodies the fundamental American value of privacy.
The right to privacy and its importance to a free society have been understood since the time of the Magna Carta. Protecting privacy against intrusion by government officials is a deeply held value in the United States. Privacy also is an important component of the rights to freedom of conscience, thought, religion, expression, and property. The rapid growth and power of surveillance technology today makes concerns about privacy.
This case also explained thoughts behind the importance of Prior Restraint. Buckley v.
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