From: Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@turbont.net)
Date: Sun Apr 09 2000 - 14:18:52 MDT
T0Morrow@aol.com wrote:
>
> Greg writes:
>
> >[A]s a matter of simple textual construction and logic, I
> >don't think you can look to the IXth amendment as a SOURCE of rights. I
> >think the most we can say is 1) that it's not inconsistent with rights that
> >arise from or have their legal authority in some other source and 2) that
> >from this we can safely imply that the Founders believed that there were
> such
> >other sources of human rights.
>
> That strikes me as utterly sound. The 9th does not create rights but merely
> limits in certain ways the power of statists (federal ones at first and now,
> thanks to incorporation via the 14th Amendment, state, too). Or, to put it
> another way, the 9th embodies the Founders' view that state power operates as
> an exception to the default rule of individual liberty, an island in a sea of
> freedom.
>
That was ultimately my own position. I look at the 9th as being an
undefined default set of rights that are recognised as residing in the
individual.
The 10th deals with 'powers', rather than 'rights', which I'm not
legally versed enough to know exactly what the two terms may have in
common, but that was the basis of my conception that the 9th dealt with
the residual natural rights of the individual, while the 10th dealt with
reserving undefined governmental powers to the states and the people,
for them to hash out amongst themselves as to what government powers are
to be run at the state, county, or local level.
Mike Lorrey
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