Natural Rights, Enumerated Rights, and the Ninth Amendment
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- čas přidán 18. 10. 2009
- October 15, 2008
Speaker: Michael W. McConnell, Presidential Professor of Law, Judge, 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
Summary: The Sumner Canary Lecture
When faced with drafting a Bill of Rights, members of the First Congress were faced with an impossible problem: what to include and what to leave out. Lockean theory told them that after construction of a social compact, such as the Constitution, the people would retain all rights not relinquished to the state. But what was the legal status of those retained rights, and how would they be affected by the explicit enumeration of some but not all of them?
Michael W. McConnell joined the faculty of S.J. Quinney College of Law in 1997 after teaching at the University of Chicago Law School for 12 years, where he was William B. Graham Professor of Law. Prior to his teaching career, Professor McConnell served as assistant to the solicitor general with the U.S. Department of Justice, assistant general counsel for the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, and clerked for Chief Judge J. Skelly Wright, of the District of Columbia U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He also served a clerkship with U.S. Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan. Among the country's most distinguished scholars in the fields of constitutional law and theory with a specialty in the religion clauses of the First Amendment, Professor McConnell has argued 11 times before the U.S. Supreme Court. He is widely published in the areas of church-state relations and the First Amendment. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was sworn in as a judge on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on January 3, 2003.
Professor McConnell teaches constitutional law, family law, state and local government, religion and the First Amendment.
Begins at 5:22
A “right” is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man’s right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action-which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. (Such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.)
-Ayn Rand
I like this. It goes very deep into what are rights. How are rights determined to be a right and not a privilege?
Does the 9th amendment also cover the right to free travel using the mode of transportation of the day that is a part of the Life Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness because if it does teh courts do not seem to understand that?
It doesn't say that Joshua Miller, it says "We the People.....", and the term "the people" are listed in the 1st, 2nd, 9th and 10th Amendments.
Yep it says We the People which are sovereign not citizens the government became tyrannical disarming the people manipulation through the use of language using the strict rules of language circumvent and misconstrue the people's voice the people have the right the Second Amendment to bear arms which means weapons of offense and defense then means all weapons fully automatic included
How do we figure out what is "Retained Rights"? Is it only a "Retained Right" if the state isn't making money off of said right? I am sure that I have the "Right to free Travel using my Automobile" but since the state is making money off of the "Drivers License" my "Right" is now a "Privilege" Because the State os making money off of me having a "License"
The history is fascinating. The social contract theory is frustrating. The ONLY way in which the constitution can have any validity as a social contract is as a contract between states. Federalism, the nature of the union, is precisely what is missing from the discussion.
Joshua Miller you are the beneficiary and the price was the blood of patriots (not to mention formalities - 1) offer; (2) acceptance; (3) consideration; (4) mutuality of obligation; (5) competency and capacity; and, in certain circumstances, (6) a written instrument.)
Social contract is mystical attack on individual rights. Individual rights protect the indivdual against society, Contacts are voluntary among individuals. I never signed a "social contract." And there is no society which signs contRctaa
we arent free with debt.
If We have the right to own property, and the right to travel, then, we have the right to own property, as a privately-owned automobile, and the right to use that property as it is intended to be used, as in travel, or commuting...
not to be confused with "driving", because driving is an occupation and a privilege to use public streets in commerce... travelling in/on a horse drawn carriage predates the Constitution, and if there were automobiles at the time, as a common means of travel, they would be protected... being that that right is so fundamental and basic, there shouldn't need to be a constitutional amendment... but it seems otherwise the case...