In fact, the Supreme Court was slightly bemused by it as there was a strong disagreement in what it could be referring to. This happened continuously ever since the Bill of Rights was enacted. This has impacted the Ninth Amendment so much since then. Generally, the Supreme Court tries not to introduce a reference to the 9th amendment if possible, as its interpretation is so challenging.
However, this is changing as new technology emerges such as the internet where many aspects may have to be regulated by the 9th amendment. Many interpretations have emerged, all trying to interpret the Ninth Amendment of the Constitution and its meaning.
Many people have not paid much attention to the clause at all. The 9th Amendment was ratified on December 15th, as part of the Bill of Rights which consisted of the first 10 amendments to the US constitution.
Before it was ratified, there was a great discussion in Congress over the suggested text and whether it should be ratified at all.
Read our privacy policy for more info. Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription. Leaving a comment is also the best way to reach the management team of ConstitutionUS. Can County Governments impose regulations that differ between city and rural property in the same county thus restricting simple things like the right to having a garage?
Or is this a valid specific reason they are saying this? So they hope we overlook the 9th Amendment…. Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Table of Contents. Please leave this field empty. 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.
Instead, it is for us, the living, to decide whether we would be better off recognizing these rights. The necessity for a contemporary decision on this question may seem daunting, perhaps even frightening, to some, but the responsibility for decisions like this is built into the notion of popular sovereignty.
As Thomas Jefferson claimed, prior generations are like a foreign country to us. No American would cede to France or Russia or the United Nations the authority to determine the content of our basic rights. Neither should we cede that question to people who have been dead for centuries, many of whom believed in slavery and saw no problem with denying the right to vote to women, American Indians, and people who did not own property.
It is our responsibility to decide for ourselves what kind of country we want to live in. No one can or should decide that question for us. As we have seen, there are conflicting claims about the original meaning of the Ninth Amendment. His list was not his own proposal, but rather was his effort to convert the proposals of others to separate articles. Of particular significance is the second:.
Of these rights therefore they Shall not be deprived by the Government of the united States. Emphases added. The significance has nothing to do with the intentions of Roger Sherman—apart from his intention to use the English language in a manner that would be understood by his audience. It simply shows the content these words would have communicated to the general public.
Instead, they are identified by name.
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