Amendments nine and ten in the bill of rights directly limit the power of the
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By Michael Levy Table of ContentsNinth Amendment, amendment (1791) to the Constitution of the United States, part of the Bill of Rights, formally stating that the people retain rights absent specific enumeration. The full text of the Ninth Amendment is: Britannica Quiz
Prior to, during, and after ratification of the Constitution, debate raged about the protection of individual rights. Eventually, a Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution at the urging of the Anti-Federalists, who feared that without one, too much power would be vested in the federal government. Federalists, who believed that the Constitution had created a limited central government, countered that an enumeration of protected rights would be a possible detriment to individual liberties and render other liberties presumably unworthy of constitutional protection. Thus was born the Ninth Amendment, whose purpose was to assert the principle that the enumerated rights are not exhaustive and final and that the listing of certain rights does not deny or disparage the existence of other rights. What rights were protected by the amendment was left unclear. Since the enactment of the Bill of Rights, the U.S. Supreme Court has never relied solely (or primarily) on the Ninth Amendment, and through the mid-1960s it was mentioned only sparingly. Indeed, in 1955 in a lecture (later turned into book form) titled “The Supreme Court in the American System of Government,” Justice Robert H. Jackson admitted that the Ninth Amendment was a “mystery” to him. Since that time, however, the Ninth Amendment has been used as a secondary source of liberties and has emerged as important in the extension of the rights of privacy. In Griswold v. State of Connecticut (1965), the Supreme Court held that married couples had the right to use birth control. The majority decision rested on Fourth and Fifth Amendment grounds, but Justice Arthur Goldberg based his concurring opinion squarely on Ninth Amendment principles, stating that Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now
Taking that argument one step further, Goldberg claimed that
Goldberg’s invoking of the Ninth Amendment was criticized in a dissenting opinion by Justice Potter Stewart who wrote that
In the decades since the Griswold decision, numerous claims were made in federal filings that additional rights were protected by the Ninth Amendment (almost all were rejected), and there has been considerable debate as to what protections, if any, are guaranteed by it. Some federal courts have used the Ninth Amendment as a guidepost in their decisions, but it still has not been central to any decision. What power does the Bill of Rights limit?They put limits on the national government's right to control specific civil liberties and rights, many of which were already protected by some of the state constitutions. Liberties protected included freedom of speech, press, religion, and assembly (First Amendment).
Which does the Ninth Amendment limit?Answer and Explanation: The Ninth Amendment limits the ability of the national government to infringe non-enumerated rights. One concern about adding a Bill of Rights to the Constitution was that the rights listed would be considered a comprehensive list of rights.
What is the purpose of the 9th and 10th Amendments quizlet?What is the common purpose of the Ninth and Tenth amendments? They protect the rights of noncitizens.
Why did Madison include the 9th and 10th amendments in the Bill of Rights?The Ninth Amendment was James Madison's attempt to ensure that the Bill of Rights was not seen as granting to the people of the United States only the specific rights it addressed.
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