I'd like to file a brief in this case (ftr, I was not one of the people who PM'd dallas about this):
If you look at Article VI, which contains the clause in question, it appears that the rights enumerated by the Article are not intended to apply solely to citizens.
The only other clause in this article which mentions "citizens" is the right to vote, which is a right that by necessity must be limited only to citizens. In fact, the right to vote is limited to Northeast citizens by a separate clause, Article V Section 5:
It would be redundant for the constitution to specify in both 5.5 and 6.3 that only citizens shall have the right to vote. Therefore, the only logical conclusion was that the use of the term "citizens" in 6.3 was not to
limit the right to vote
only to citizens, it was to
guarantee citizens the right to vote without necessarily implying that others cannot be granted that right (for example, by the legislature in a statutory law, not a constitutional amendment, although that would take an amendment to 5.5). In other words, the use of "citizens" is an inclusionary, not exclusionary, term, which differentiates this section from 5.5 which excludes the right to vote from others.
As this is the only other use of the term "citizens" in Article VI, aside from the Right to Privacy Section in question in this case, it is reasonable to assume that the same definition is intended for the use of the term "citizens" in Section 5. Thus the use of "citizens" in this Section is not intended to limit the right to privacy
only to citizens, but to guarantee the right to privacy to citizens without necessarily excluding others from that right or excluding harm done to non-citizens from constituting a valid reason to impede on a citizen's right to privacy.
The other piece of the constitution relevant to this case is the beginning of Article VI, which states:
This explicitly states that the rights granted below it are the inalienable rights of
the people of the Northeast, not just Northeast citizens. The legal definition of "person" is an extremely complicated subject too much to get into here. However, I would submit to the court that the Northeast has already granted animals some rights in the
Animal Protection Act, and that this should be considered sufficient evidence that animals are at least partly considered legal persons under Northeast law. Thus, the statement that the rights listed in the Bill of Rights apply to "the people" of the Northeast guarantees some level of protection of these rights for animals, where feasible and applicable.
Considering all of this, I believe that the act of bestiality meets the standard of an action that "directly harm[ s] another citizen physically, mentally, or otherwise prevents another citizen from exercising this same freedom" as the writers of this Constitution intended that clause to be interpreted, and thus that the Bestiality Criminalization Act is constitutional.
