Daniel Farber discusses the Ninth Amendment in Retained By the People: The "Silent" Ninth Amendment and the Constitutional Rights Americans Don't Know They Have.
The Bill of Rights ensures all Americans free speech, the right to trial by jury, and many other important rights. Do additional rights exist, and is the government obliged to recognize them? Is there a right to privacy? To engage in homosexual acts? To marry? Legal scholar Daniel Farber says the express purpose of the Ninth Amendment was to recognize "unenumerated" rights such as these. Yet this amendment has never been the basis for a Supreme Court decision.
Simply put, the Ninth states that human rights precede government. The law does not grant these rights and therefore has no authority to take them away. Advocates of "original intent" who demand that the courts recognize only the limited set of rights explicitly listed in the constitution are in fact advocating the opposite of what the Framers intended - they had the foresight to realize they could not possibly anticipate every issue that might arise or what values their descendants would find worthy of protection.
Providing critical new support for controversial Supreme Court decisions dealing with abortion, homosexuality, and the right to travel between states, Farber's view doesn't neatly track any political agenda, including his own, making his conclusions challenging for both liberals and conservatives- Cody's Books
Bio
Daniel Farber
Professor Daniel Farber received a B.A. in philosophy with high honors in 1971 and an M.A. in sociology in 1972, both from the University of Illinois. In 1975 he earned his J.D. from the University of Illinois, where he was a member of the Order of the Coif, editor in chief of the University of Illinois Law Review, a Harno Scholar and class valedictorian.
After graduating, Professor Farber clerked for Judge Philip W. Tone of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit and for Justice John Paul Stevens of the U.S. Supreme Court. He then practiced law with Sidley and Austin before joining the faculty of the University of Illinois Law School.
In 1981 he became a member of the University of Minnesota Law School faculty. During his years there he became the first Henry J. Fletcher Professor of Law in 1987, served as a visiting professor at Stanford Law School, Harvard Law School and the University of Chicago Law School, and was named McKnight Presidential Professor of Public Law in 2000.
(1689) British law, one of the basic instruments of the British constitution. It incorporated the provisions of the Declaration of Rights, which William III and Mary II accepted upon taking the throne. Its main purpose was to declare illegal various practices of James II, such as the royal prerogative of dispensing with the law in certain cases. The result of a long struggle between the Stuart kings and the English people and Parliament, it made the monarchy clearly conditional on the will of Parliament and provided freedom from arbitrary government. It also dealt with the succession to the throne.