What is The 9th Amendment?

THE Ninth Amendment to the Constitution gives some added protection to the people.

It is part of the Bill of Rights, which became law on December 15, 1791.

What is The 9th Amendment?

The 9th Amendment is as follows: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

In simple terms, the rights of the people are not limited to just the rights listed in the Constitution, according to the amendment.

"Since its enactment, scholars and judges have argued about both the Ninth Amendment’s meaning and its legal effect, and the courts have rarely relied upon it," scholars Randy Barnett and Louis Michael Seidman wrote.

"During his failed confirmation hearing to become a Supreme Court justice in 1987, Robert Bork analogized the Amendment to an 'inkblot,' which hid the constitutional text that was under it.

"Just as judges should not guess what was under an inkblot, he argued, so too they should not guess at the Ninth Amendment’s meaning.

"Bork’s very public denial that any meaning of the Amendment could be discovered fueled intense academic interest in the original meaning of the text."

Seidman argues that "while it defeats the inference that the enumeration of some rights denies the existence of others, the amendment does not itself establish the existence of these other rights.

"Just as opponents of unenumerated rights cannot rely on the enumeration of some rights to defeat the claim that there are other rights, proponents of unenumerated rights cannot rely on the text of the Ninth Amendment to prove that the rights exist or to establish what the rights are.

"Instead, in his view, the Ninth Amendment leaves the argument about unenumerated rights unresolved."

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