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12  DOBBS v. JACKSON WOMEN’S HEALTH ORGANIZATION 

Opinion of the Court 

U. S.,  at  763–767,  and  nn.  12–13.    The  second  category—
which is the one in question here—comprises a select list of 
fundamental rights that are not mentioned anywhere in the 
Constitution. 

In deciding whether a right falls into either of these cat-
egories,  the  Court  has  long  asked  whether  the  right  is
“deeply rooted in [our] history and tradition” and whether 
it  is  essential  to  our  Nation’s  “scheme  of  ordered  liberty.” 
Timbs v. Indiana, 586 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (slip op., at 3)
(internal  quotation  marks  omitted);  McDonald,  561  U. S., 
at 764, 767 (internal quotation marks omitted); Glucksberg, 
521 U. S., at 721 (internal quotation marks omitted).19  And 
in  conducting  this  inquiry,  we  have  engaged  in  a  careful 
analysis of the history of the right at issue.

Justice Ginsburg’s opinion for the Court in Timbs is a re-
cent example.  In concluding that the Eighth Amendment’s
protection  against  excessive  fines  is  “fundamental  to  our 
scheme  of  ordered  liberty”  and  “deeply  rooted  in  this  Na-
tion’s history and tradition,” 586 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 7) 
(internal quotation marks omitted), her opinion traced the 
right  back  to  Magna  Carta,  Blackstone’s  Commentaries, 
and 35 of the 37 state constitutions in effect at the ratifica-
tion of the Fourteenth Amendment.  586 U. S., at ___–___ 
(slip op., at 3–7).

A  similar  inquiry  was  undertaken  in  McDonald,  which 
held that the Fourteenth Amendment protects the right to
keep and bear arms.  The lead opinion surveyed the origins 
of the Second Amendment, the debates in Congress about 

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19 See also, e.g., Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U. S. 145, 148 (1968) (asking 
whether “a right is among those ‘fundamental principles of liberty and
justice which lie at the base of our civil and political institutions’ ”); Palko 
v. Connecticut, 302 U. S. 319, 325 (1937) (requiring “a ‘principle of justice
so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked 
as  fundamental’ ”  (quoting  Snyder  v.  Massachusetts,  291  U. S.  97,  105 
(1934))).