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To: wideawake
Then you should be aware that penumbra means "partial shadow" not "underlying principle."

That's one of the dictionary definitions. I'm talking Supreme Court definitions. FYI:

http://www.nationalreview.com/levin/levin200503140754.asp

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/griswold.html

Note Justice Douglas' use of the word "penumbra":

In NAACP v. Alabama we protected the "freedom to associate and privacy in one's associations," noting that freedom of association was a peripheral First Amendment right. Disclosure of membership lists of a constitutionally valid association, we held, was invalid "as entailing the likelihood of a substantial restraint upon the exercise by petitioner's members of their right to freedom of association." Ibid. In other words, the First Amendment has a penumbra where privacy is protected from governmental intrusion. The right of "association," like the right of belief (Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624), is more than the right to attend a meeting; it includes the right to express one's attitudes or philosophies by membership in a group or by affiliation with it or by other lawful means. Association in that context is a form of expression of opinion; and while it is not expressly included in the First Amendment its existence is necessary in making the express guarantees fully meaningful.

The foregoing cases suggest that specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance. Various guarantees create zones of privacy. The right of association contained in the penumbra of the First Amendment is one, as we have seen.

254 posted on 09/28/2006 7:07:36 AM PDT by Labyrinthos
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To: Labyrinthos
Yes, the legal term means that certain enumerated rights may imply further rights that may be needed in order to enable the free exercise of that right.

Not the same thing. Penumbras relate to contextual circumstances.

The Constitution enumerates rights like the right to bear arms, speak freely, assemble, to not be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment or unreasonable searches and seizures, etc.

However, only living people can even exercise such rights in the first place.

That's not circumstantial - that's a fundamental assumption without which the Constitution is a nonsense document that at this present moment in time enforces the right of people who died a hundred years ago not to be charged excessive bail.

257 posted on 09/28/2006 7:25:02 AM PDT by wideawake ("The nation which forgets its defenders will itself be forgotten." - Calvin Coolidge)
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