[Skywalk]

The 10th applies to the States, not the 9th.

The 9th only mentions the people.

But maybe that's a collective right, like the gun-grabbers argue with the 2nd.

But you knew that.

[irish_links]

"...The 10th applies to the States, not the 9th.

The 9th only mentions the people...."

You've made a distinction without a difference. The IXth relates to rights and the Xth to powers. The concept of subsidiarity applies to both.

The two together reinforce the idea that the Federal government has no authority to deprive the people of a freedom that it has, which includes the power to pass laws that you do not like, but which otherwise do not deprive the citizens of said state of any right explicity set forth in the Bill of Rights or were otherwise recognized in the Common Law. (Note to Skywalk: as Scalia aptly demonstrates, no unlimited right to private personal conduct is so recognized).

The Constitution established a variety of ways that the several states could create new a right not recognized in the common law or explicity identified in the Bill of Rights. These include having the legislature pass a law or proposing a constitutional amendment and having it ratified by a super-majority of the states.

The Founders could have, but did not grant the federal courts the authority to invent new rights not expressed in the BoR or commonly granted in the Common Law. It certainly did not intend to permit the federal courts to invent such new rights and then impose them on the several states.

Granted, the language of the IXth and Xth is purposely vague, but the political apparatus established under the Constitution is not. It is a leap too far to suggest that the Founders intended these Amendments as a mechanism to give the federal government a special, extra-political power to establish new rights not recognized in the Common Law.