
Originally Posted by
Cordelier
You can make a claim to having a right under the terms of the 9th Amendment, but for that claim to have any legal validity, you have to get a court to rule in your favor... wouldn't you agree? We're a nation of laws, not of men and as such, the rights we hold true have to be consistent with the law.
As far as the 9th Amendment goes, I would say that it obviously gives scope for the existence of unenumerated rights... but it'd be a gross overreach to take it as a blank check for any unenumerated right you can dream up. If you want to make a constitutionally valid argument for the existence of a specific unenumerated right, then I would say that you have to first make a legal case for it's existence. To make such a legal case, you have to clearly define the right you wish to assert and explain how the enumerated rights in the first 8 Amendments can be combined to legitimately argue for the existence of the new unenumerated right.
Even if I don't quite understand your First Amendment argument, I do understand that you feel it gives scope for your argument. Fair enough.... but the First Amendment has literally been the subject of a multitude of rulings of the Supreme Court over the years, and I can't think of any of them which support your interpretation. So the First Amendment isn't enough to make your case... you need to combine it with another right granted by the Constitution before you can start to make a case. A 9th Amendment right can only exist as a hybrid of other rights.