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Interaction of 2d, 9th, and 14th Amendments
The 9th Amendment provides that the enumeration of rights in the first eight amendments shall not be read to disparage or rule out other rights reserved by the people. It was designed to overcome the objection that enumation of a list of rights would be construed to rule out any other rights (which is of course what has happened).
The 14th Amendment forbids the States to deprive anyone of the "privileges and immunities" of national citizenship. As I read the legislative history, that meant the federal Bill of Rights protections (and some others).
The Supreme Court, in the Slaughterhouse Cases and US v. Cruikshank, differed. The reasoning (after the Court's initial proclamation that doing this, and giving federal courts power to enforce it, would be so shocking a violation of federalism as to require the clearest of proof that this was intended -- the "we can't believe they meant to do this" maxim of constitutional interpretation) was roughly: (1) privileges and immunities of US citizenship must be something other than P&I of state citizenship, those rights that would have existed before there was a federal constitution and thus federal citizenship; (2) the rights at issue in those cases (freedom to assemble, to bear arms, etc.) were rights that always existed in any free society, and thus antedated the US Constitution, hence (3) they could not be privileges and immunities of US citizenship.
Now, with the caveat that I've always figured that if you couldn't win on the 2nd Amendment, you sure weren't going to win on the 9th,--
Doesn't the Slaughterhouse/Cruikshank reasoning lead inevitably to the conclusion that the individual right to arms is protected, against federal action, by the 9th Amendment? The Court says the reason it isn't protected against State action by the 14th Amendment, is that it is a right that has always existed, in any free society, existed whether written out or not, and hence pre-existed the Constitution. Doesn't that fall squarely within the 9th Amendment as a right reserved by the people?
It seems to me that there is a dilemma here: a right held inapplicable to the States under the P&I clause must logically be one that binds the U.S. under the 9th Amendment.
2 Comments
Excellent. The argument could not be put more succinctly.
THE TEXT OF SECTION 1 OF THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT
Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment reads as follows:
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
“NO STATE SHALL” IN THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT. BUT WHAT ABOUT THE UNITED STATES?
In the second sentence of Section 1 in the Fourteenth Amendment the “United States” is omitted from the prohibitive declaration “No State Shall.”
The Fourteenth Amendment is a tool for usurpation by the United States.
Because the U.S. Constitution is a social compact, (a contract), between three parties, and the United States is omitted in the prohibitive declaration in the second sentence of Section 1 to the Fourteenth Amendment that second sentence is the classic example of a parent telling the child “Don’t do as I do! Do as I say!”
To illustrate that example and to expose the unconstitutionality of the Fourteenth Amendment I take the literal meaning of the second sentence and flip its logical meaning in reverse in order to explicitly include all three parties of the Constitution. That portion of the Fourteenth Amendment rewritten in that manner reads as follows:
“The United States shall make and enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States and shall deprive any person of life, liberty, and property, without due process of law and deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws; but the States shall not.”
That sentence conveys the true meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment in its original grammatical state as ratified.
The Fourteenth Amendment then becomes the constitutional authorization for the U.S. Congress, the President, any federal judge or agent of the U.S. Government to do whatever they want as the President himself has said that the Constitution is just a "goddamn piece of paper.
FURTHER READING:
Bush: Constitution just a gooddamn piece of paper.
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7779.shtml
http://www.ioerror.us/2005/12/09/bush-constitution-just-a-goddamned-piece-of-paper/
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/12/12/17284/138
Unconstitutional Fourteenth Amendment
http://www.sweetliberty.org/fourteenth.amend.htm
http://christianparty.net/14tha.htm