[puroresu]

Slavery **DID** require a constitutional amendment to end it. The 13th amendment does just that.

The 9th amendment was designed to stop the federal government from interfering in areas not covered by the Constitution. It doesn't apply to the states, and was never intended to. If it did, it would nullify the 10th amendment, which was written by and ratified by the same people who wrote the 9th.

I've asked this question before, and no proponent of an expansive 9th amendment has been able to answer it. Why did it take a constitutional amendment (the 19th) to give women federally encforced voting rights? This was decades AFTER the 9th amendment was ratified. And decades AFTER the 14th amendment was ratified.

Under the 9th amendment, the federal government cannot interfere if states and voters, via the political process, recognize additional rights to those spelled out in the Bill of Rights. It gives the feds NO power to force states to recognize any particular right. The 14th amendment didn't change that.

The same Reconstruction Congress that gave us the 13th amendment (abolition of slavery) and the 15th amendment (black voting rights) gave us the the 14th. Yet, modern "liberals" interpret the 14th in such a broad manner that it negates the reason for the 13th & 15th. If the 14th is as broad as people today claim it is, it was the only amendment needed. But it wasn't. Obviously, its authors didn't think it would even ban slavery or give blacks the vote. And it didn't. It took additional amendments to do that. The 14th amendment was designed to guarantee blacks equal access to state courts and other institutions of justice. It didn't grant them any additional rights such as a right not to be enslaved or to vote. It didn't authorize federal judges to federalize the 9th amendment.

So, matters upon which the Constitution was silent, such as female suffrage, were just as much left to the states after passage of the 14th amendment as before. Judges couldn't announce a federally enforceable right of women to vote, found in the 9th & 14th amendments. That's why the suffragettes had to amend the Constitution, about 130 years after the 9th amendment was approved and about 60 years after the 14th amendment.

The 9th & 14th amendments **DO NOT** authorize the federal courts to strike down state laws banning abortion or sodomy. Those are matters retained to the people to decide via the ballot box and electoral process in their states or localities. Unless and until the pro-aborts amend the Constitution to guarantee abortion or sodomy "rights" (as the Reconstruction Congress and the suffragettes did with their respective amendments) the courts will be operating in an outlaw manner in these "privacy" rulings.

These "privacy" rulings are federal tyranny, a seizure of power by the federal courts which they were never granted.

[aristeides]

I largely agree with your posting. But I don't think you're right about the 14th Amendment not having the effect of banning slavery. The 13th Amendment was needed because the 13th came first, when the 14th Amendment was not yet even being considered. I think "nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law" would almost certainly be violated by a state's having a slave code.

[nicollo]

I've asked this question before, and no proponent of an expansive 9th amendment has been able to answer it. Why did it take a constitutional amendment (the 19th) to give women federally encforced voting rights? This was decades AFTER the 9th amendment was ratified. And decades AFTER the 14th amendment was ratified.

It didn't. As with the 17th, by the time the 19th amendment was ratified just about every State already allowed women suffrage. States that hadn't yet gone there were on the way. The 19th amendment was not needed for the cause.

We have precisely the same dynamic with Lawrence: the constitutional fiat comes long after the fight was already won.

What kind of world would it be if, say, Texas denied women the vote and abortion, and sodomy was outlawed? I submit it'd be a far better world: let New York be New York, and Texas be Texas. Instead, the impatience and sick righteousness of reformers requires their laws be imposed upon everybody. (That goes for all extremes of politics).

Btw, I'm glad to see this debate heading away from "privacy." In the Scotus ruling, the catch was sodomy. Privacy was the bait.

[sweetliberty]

Your post #60 is excellent. Too bad the courts aren't listening.

[GraniteStateConservative]

I am aware of the 13th Amendment, thank you. My point is that the Constitution with the Bill of Rights could easily be read to outlaw slavery (except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted). Just because the Founders were selective in applying the Constitution, it doesn't follow that they were right to do so-- or that it was proper. The nature of our form of government requires that the presumption is of liberty and not control by the state. The Founders wanted limited government and requiring a compelling interest by the state to act is the way to yield a limited government.

The Founders were aware of tyrannies of the majority and mob rule and opposed its development, and they declared that our rights to personal liberty were sacred and unalienable. They were also politicians and sometimes didn't do the right thing because of the desires of the majority.