This leads me to ask a question. I know that the Constitution is a limit on government not the people. It tells govt. what it may, must and may not do. It is not a full ennumeration of the people’s rights as mentioned in the 9th amendment. There are, though, some spelled out in the Bill of Rights.
So why is it that some people then point to the Constitution and say “well, the right to X is not in the Constitution so that right doesn’t exist.”
For instance, I was reading Levin’s Men In Black and he had just finished discussing what I put in my first paragraph and then a few pages later began saying that the people do not have a right to privacy because it’s not in the Constitution. I could not read any further because of what seemed to be a great contradiction. Mind you, I’m not here claiming a side in that argument, just confused by the contradiction. Any enlightenment would be helpful.
From the OxFord Companion to American Law, edited by Kermit Hall, 2002 Oxford Univ Press,article on “Privacy”, pgs 637-639:
“But the word “Privacy” does not appear in the Constitution.”
But the SCOTUS has used that word in some of it’s rulings, for example: “Griswold vs Connecticut” 1965, with references to the First,Third,Fourth,Fifth, and Ninth Amendments. Also in the “Roe vs Wade” 1972, the word was used in the majority opinion over a woman’s use of her body..It was also used in subsequent Supreme Court rulings broadening it’s impact, such as in “Cruzan vs Director” 1990 case which was the right to die case..
Justice Brandeis originally touched on the concept in his dissenting opinion on “Olmstead vs United States”, a 1929 wiretapping case. He said the “Founders conferred, as against the Government, the right to be left alone-the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.”