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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (7313)	5/9/2006 1:53:57 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 71588

Now, between Bork and Siegan, I prefer Siegan. His defenses of freedom seem more principled than Bork's. He saw the original thought of the founders as principled, and that some of those principles become obvious only when taking the Ninth and Tenth Amendments seriously. He even suggested that government justify all legislation with reference to these principles. Bork, on the other hand, famously dismissed the Ninth and Tenth Amendments as "blotted out" as if with ink. Bork's ink blot statement was about the 9th amendment. I don't think it involved the 10th. And it wasn't a statement that the 9th amendment should be or had been blotted out with ink, but rather that it was like the "ink blot test", where someone holds up a complex blot of ink and asks you what you think it is. The same blot can mean different things to different people. It doesn't have any clear set meaning. As much as I agree with Bernie Siegan's ideas about freedom and property rights I don't think they are rights recognized by the US constitution through the 9th amendment. The 9th amendment says - "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." I agree with that as a principle, but I don't think it is or should be considered an active statement of law. It doesn't forbid or demand any action, grant or limit any power. I do not think it is meant to take natural rights and turn them in to constitutional rights. If that is what it is supposed to mean than it is indeed an "ink-blot" because different people have different views on natural rights. I think the principle behind it is that the lack of an explicitly grant of any right in the bill of rights or the original constitution should not be used as an argument against something being a natural right, or against it being incorporated in to law and made a legal right, or against it being incorporated in to the constitution by a later amendment and made a constitutional right. I do think the constitution properly protects property rights more than many interpretations of it have actually protected these rights, but the main mechanism it has for doing so, is its limitations on the powers of government, not direct explicit protections of such rights, and not the ninth amendment somehow incorporating natural rights in to the constitution. Tim