What does the 9th Amendment mean?

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

the bill of rights is a safeguard of the rights of the people, it is not their source. is not an exhaustive list of the rights retained by the people. if you read it in conjunction with the tenth amendment, it makes sense.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

the bill of rights is a safeguard of the rights of the people, it is not their source. is not an exhaustive list of the rights retained by the people. if you read it in conjunction with the tenth amendment, it makes sense.

What I'm getting at is that this, put together with the Fourteenth Amendment, really belies claims that there isn't a right to privacy in the Constitution, that there isn't a right to marry in the Constitution, etc.

some elements of a right to privacy are implied by the Bill of Rights. no part of the Constitution deals with marriage - it is only when there is unwarranted discrimination by the government that it could conceivably be an issue, even with the fourteenth amendment.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

the bill of rights is a safeguard of the rights of the people, it is not their source. is not an exhaustive list of the rights retained by the people. if you read it in conjunction with the tenth amendment, it makes sense.

What I'm getting at is that this, put together with the Fourteenth Amendment, really belies claims that there isn't a right to privacy in the Constitution, that there isn't a right to marry in the Constitution, etc.

some elements of a right to privacy are implied by the Bill of Rights. no part of the Constitution deals with marriage - it is only when there is unwarranted discrimination by the government that it could conceivably be an issue, even with the fourteenth amendment.

How about a right to abortion? I think everyone, supporters and opponents, can agree that, regardless of the privacy rights explicitly in the Constitution, abortion is not contained in those explicitly contained.

Anyway, the 9th Amendment is as much a blank check as the 10th Amendment is a restriction on the power of the federal government. They can be read to mean whatever you want (give or take away whatever power you want) because they were added, not because they were good policy (or for any policy reasons at all), but because the Framers needed some of the more ardent Federalists and Anti-Federalists aboard. As a result, they have no attached legislative intent (other than getting states to ratify the Constitution), and judges can do whatever the hell they want with them since the wording makes no attempt to clarify.

Of course a right to abortion cannot be inferred from the privacy concerns addressed in the Constitution. Anyone who uses the Constitution to support abortion does not take its intended meaning seriously. The 9th amendment is not a blank check for the federal government to do what it pleases, simply because the bill of rights is a charter of what Isaiah Berlin called "negative liberties". There is no implication of a right to anything being provided by the government outside of its enumerated powers. The focus in the bill of rights is on what the government may not do to you. All of this is dependent on an idea of natural right rather than rights being granted by the government.