Source: http://www.stephankinsella.com/2012/01/taking-the-ninth-amendment-seriously/
Timestamp: 2019-04-18 22:38:11+00:00

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Below is the text version of Taking the Ninth Amendment Seriously: A Review of Calvin R. Massey’s Silent Rights: The Ninth Amendment and the Constitution’s Unenumerated Rights , 24 Hastings Const. L. Q. 757 (1997). This submitted draft version may differ slightly from version published.
Abstract: In this review, Mr. Kinsella details and critiques Calvin R. Massey’s recent book on the Ninth Amendment. Massey points out that many modern constitutional theorists hold that the Ninth Amendment cannot be read as a source of rights that can be used to strike down legislation, but only as a rule of construction that prevents construing the Bill of Rights to imply the existence of federal powers beyond those enumerated. However, Massey argues, because of the modern expansion of federal powers and current constitutional jurisprudence, it is now “impossible” to achieve the amendment’s original function of limiting the implied powers of the federal government. Massey suggests that, under a theory of “constitutional cy pres,” the original government-limiting purpose of the Ninth Amendment can nevertheless be achieved if it is read as a source of unenumerated rights that can be used to trump legislation. Massey goes on to argue that these unenumerated rights include both natural rights and positive rights protected in state constitutions.
Kinsella argues that Massey’s theory has little constitutional support, and that this theory would undermine the principle of federalism, itself one of the original purposes of the Constitution. Kinsella concludes by suggesting better approaches to constitutional interpretation or reform, such as the approaches of Randy Barnett and Marshall DeRosa.
>What we need is an amendment forbidding the circumvention of the Constitution. It could read: “The Constitution shall not be circumvented.” I just got a big laugh from any lawyers who may be reading this.
We Americans are lucky indeed to have inherited our Constitution and our classical liberal tradition. For suppose we had inherited a totalitarian form of government, a government that did not respect property rights or other individual rights, which arbitrarily discriminated against—even executed, or exterminated—certain classes of its subjects from time to time. If such a government on occasion failed to implement its totalitarian “constitution” to the letter—say, it was slow to adopt a fully socialized agriculture policy, or temporarily retreated from such a policy after causing the starvation of a few million people—it is unlikely that we would be complaining that the government was shirking its duties under the totalitarian constitution. The totalitarian constitution itself—the basic plan underlying the government—would be inherently illegitimate, and thus no purpose would be served by advocating the stricter adherence to the totalitarian government’s ideals. No purpose in service of liberty, at least.
Regrettably, under a totalitarian system, proponents of liberty and individual rights would be relegated to other tactics, such as being resigned to one’s doomed fate and trying to make the best of things, fomenting revolution or civil disobedience, trying to persuade or educate one’s fellow man or government officials to see the light of liberty, or even advocating outright dishonest interpretation of the socialist constitution to achieve better results. A constitution, then, has only instrumental value: it is worth supporting and interpreting honestly only if such an interpretation tends to lead to desirable results. To a supporter of individual rights, for example, a constitution providing for an explicitly totalitarian system does not have instrumental value, and he would not seek to have such constitution put into effect, or put into effect more stringently.
Now imagine that there is a better Constitution in place, one that was originally designed to undergird limited government and individual rights. But, unfortunately, over the decades, the government has incrementally misconstrued the Constitution to seize more and more power not authorized in the Constitution and to violate individual rights protected by the Constitution. Imagine also that, for a variety of reasons, the population had acquiesced, and even grown somewhat accustomed, to this state of affairs. Advocates of limited government and individual rights in this setting have an option available to them that those in our hypothetical socialist society do not: they can insist that the government respect the Constitution’s original meaning. They can argue, for example, that the Supreme Court has been misinterpreting the Constitution and should now interpret the Constitution in accordance with its original understanding. Given the country’s traditional respect for the Constitution and at least some widespread sentiment that the government’s very legitimacy depends on its acting within limits proscribed by the Constitution, this might be a reasonable, even hopeful, course to take.
Since America is largely in this latter situation, it is for this reason that I say that we Americans are lucky to have inherited our Constitution and our classical liberal tradition. We are not limited to the unattractive options of revolution or despairing resignation as our only responses to government tyranny. We can urge the Supreme Court, and Congress, to respect individual rights and limit government powers, in accordance with the original design of the Constitution. Our Constitutional has instrumental value—at least for those who support limited government and both personal and economic individual freedom.
One problem with trying to persuade the Court to move towards a more originalist interpretation of the Constitution is that, even if the Court wants to do this, it may be too late. Given the entrenched and accumulated accretions of government power and court decisions that have resulted from over a century of misinterpretation of the Constitution, the Supreme Court is unlikely to simply undo its own jurisprudence and interpret the Constitution anew. Further, even if the Court wanted to start reining in the federal government’s powers, it would not be able to get away with it, at least not without a sufficiently sneaky or clever theory that allows some incremental movement towards liberty in a manner not obvious enough to catch the Leviathan’s eye.
In his new book, Silent Rights: The Ninth Amendment and the Constitution’s Unenumerated Rights, Professor Calvin R. Massey seeks to provide such a “stealth” theory (my words, not his) by providing a new way to read the Ninth Amendment. As Massey points out, this amendment has been largely ignored since it was added to the Constitution in 1791. In this book, Massey proposes a novel and somewhat radical theory to reincorporate the amendment and its original purposes into the current constitutional landscape. At the heart of Massey’s theory is his proposed “constitutional cy pres doctrine,” and his contention that the Ninth Amendment incorporates rights based in state law. Before further exploring this theory, it is necessary to delve into, as Massey does, the history and political context of the amendment.
The Ninth Amendment provides: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” This follows, of course, various rights “enumerated” in the first eight amendments in the Bill of Rights, and precedes the Tenth Amendment. In a discussion of the original debate concerning the Ninth Amendment, Massey points out that there are many possible answers as to just what the Ninth Amendment means.
Some, like former Judge Robert Bork, contend that the amendment has no discernible meaning whatever. Others . . . suggest that the amendment is merely hortatory and duplicative of the axiomatic reminder in the Tenth Amendment that the states retain all powers not surrendered under the Constitution. Still others . . . contend that the amendment prohibits the federal government from exercising any power with respect to the “rights retained by the people.” . . . Yet another view . . . asserts that the Ninth Amendment was merely a cautionary device to check unwarranted extension of the powers of the federal government. Some . . . suggest that the amendment is best regarded as a . . . rule of interpretation [that] invalidates [the] argument that any given right (such as the right to use contraceptives) is not to be included within some enumerated right of the Constitution (such as due process) simply because the right to use contraceptives is not expressly enumerated in the Constitution. . . . Finally, [some] contend that the amendment ought to be treated as an independent source of substantive and judicially enforceable individual rights, determined without reference to any of the enumerated rights.
As Massey explains, one of the objectives of the Ninth Amendment was to preserve the states’ sovereignty and independence, in part so that the states could serve as a check on expansions of federal power. To this end, the central government was vested only with few and defined powers, reserving other powers to the states. Protection of the natural rights of citizens would be largely a matter for the states to handle. Because of the limited delegation of power to the federal government, the Federalists did not believe an enumerated bill of rights to be necessary. Without the granted power to invade rights, the federal government would simply be unable to do so.
The Antifederalists, nevertheless, demanded a bill of rights, out of fear that, without it, the federal government would both encroach on the states’ sovereignty and violate the natural rights of the people. History has proven the Antifederalists right: it would have been too dangerous to create the federal government without also providing a bill of rights. Although the current federal government has arrogated to itself vast powers not authorized by the Constitution, it seems almost certain that things would have been worse had the Bill of Rights not been added as a precautionary measure.
On the other hand, as Federalists countered, even if having no bill of rights would be dangerous, enumerating rights to limit a government of purportedly limited powers is also dangerous, for two primary reasons. First, the very declaration of a particular right (e.g., to freedom of speech) might be construed to imply that some power had been given to the federal government to invade this right. This could lead to the implication that the federal government possessed unenumerated powers, similar to the broad “police powers” exercised by states, rather than strictly limited, enumerated powers. These unenumerated powers of the central government could be used to invade any (unenumerated) rights of the citizenry as well as the sovereignty of the states. Second, listing certain rights in the “bill of rights might raise the implication that the only rights possessed by the people were those enumerated,” i.e., that the listing of rights in the Constitution was exhaustive. Enter the Ninth Amendment, designed, as Massey shows, to combat both these dangers.
we would be unlikely to converse in the same vernacular. We are likely to think of rights as trumping governmental powers. Thus, pursuant to the commerce clause Congress may have the power to enact a law forbidding the interstate shipment of Bibles, but its effective ability to do so is trumped by at least two First Amendment rights—freedom of speech and the right to free exercise of religion.
Massey also argues that the interrelationship between the Ninth and Tenth Amendments can be better explained if one realizes that the founding generation viewed rights and powers as complementary, merely two sides of the same coin. In order to secure individual rights against infringement by the federal government, both amendments were necessary to constrain the government’s powers.
The Ninth would do so by guarding against either the inference of nonexistent unenumerated rights or the inference of constructive powers. The Tenth would do so by an explicit statement that the central government possessed only its specified powers. The Tenth Amendment may be seen as performing the principal function of rebutting the Antifederalist concern that the new government might be presumed to possess all powers not specifically retained, while the Ninth amendment may be seen as primarily addressing the Federalist concern that any enumeration of rights might be viewed as recognition of the existence of implied governmental powers. But both amendments are more complex. The Ninth Amendment also addresses, in part, the fear that rights enumeration would eliminate other rights, and the Tenth also preserves to the people their discretionary authority to allocate (or not) powers to their state governmental agents. The complex and dual nature of the two amendments is deeply rooted in the founding generation’s perceptions of the inextricable relationship between rights and powers. Thus, the lack of either amendment would be inimical to the preservation of a zone of individual autonomy where governments could not intrude.
As Massey points out, even if it is admitted that the Ninth Amendment “could be a proper constitutional basis for unenumerated rights[, this] does nothing to solve the enormous problem of selecting which unenumerated rights deserve designation as constitutional protected.” Under Massey’s theory of “constitutional cy pres doctrine,” elaborated in Part III of Silent Rights, he lets the states do most of this work for us. It is to this doctrine that we now turn.
After two centuries of constitutional development, we no longer make any serious attempt to control the extent of the implied powers of Congress. If the Ninth Amendment’s original intent was only to provide a rule of construction by which claims of implied congressional power would be rejected, that function has been irretrievably eclipsed by the awesome breadth of contemporary federal power.
In other words, it is now, perhaps regrettably, “impossible” to achieve the Ninth Amendment’s original function of limiting the implied powers of the federal government (the limited-powers function). The genie is now, irrevocably, out of the bottle.
It is here that Massey borrows from the concept cy pres, to announce his “constitutional” cy pres doctrine. Under the doctrine of cy pres, “When faced with the problem of an expressed testamentary intent that is impossible to achieve, courts seek to effectuate as nearly as possible (cy pres) the testator’s intent.” Similarly, if we still wish to “preserve the supposed original function of preventing implied federal powers,” a new interpretation must be given to the Ninth Amendment to attempt to limit governmental power. In fact, “To effectuate the original intent as nearly as possible it is necessary to constrain governmental power by reading the Ninth Amendment as a source of judicially enforceable individual rights that operate to limit the exercise of governmental power.” Thus, in today’s context, even those who attribute only the limited-powers function to the Ninth Amendment must be willing to accept use of the amendment to generate unenumerated rights if the amendment is to be at all effective in limiting the exercise of government power.
If the original intention of the amendment was to confine governmental power, the reason for doing so was entirely to preserve rights. We have failed to confine those powers, partly because we now regard the affirmative assertion of rights as the vehicle for controlling the unwarranted assumption of governmental power. Thus, the only way the Ninth Amendment can be applied in our times to accomplish its original purpose is to regard the amendment as an independent source of individual rights.
Massey consoles those who are uncomfortable with using a cy pres-type doctrine to interpret the Constitution by showing that this type of reasoning is not really without precedent, although Massey’s jazzy term “constitutional cy pres” appears not to have been used before. For example, the Court gave “an expansive reading to the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment in order to accomplish the intended purposes of the privileges and immunities clause” when the Slaughter-House Cases decision, and the lack of will to overturn that decision, made it impossible to implement the original purposes of this clause. Other supposed examples of constitutional cy pres include cases involving the Eleventh and Fourteenth Amendments.
But the utility Massey’s appeal to constitutional cy pres is unclear. In a standard cy pres situation where, for some external reason, it is actually impossible to achieve the testator’s will, the court attempts to effectuate as nearly as possible the testator’s intent. However, if today it is “impossible” to honestly interpret the Constitution and to give the Ninth Amendment its original reading, this is not due to some impersonal, external cause that the Court is helpless to do anything about. Instead, it is largely the Court’s own twisting of the Constitution over the last two centuries, as well as its current unwillingness to return to a saner reading of the Constitution, that lies behind the current “impossibility” of limiting the federal government’s powers. The government will be unable to implement a proposed law or regulation whether it is declared by the Court to be unconstitutional because (a) it did not have the power (an “impossible” result nowadays), or (b) unenumerated Ninth Amendment rights stand in the way (Massey’s cy pres method). Thus, one wonders why the Court would overturn a law based on an unenumerated right, given an unwillingness to do so by claiming lack of legitimate governmental power to implement the law. It is not as if Congress or the President would be any less upset at being thwarted by the Court in the second manner as opposed to the first.
Massey appears to believe that the reason for the current “impossibility” of using the Ninth Amendment to directly limit the federal government’s powers is the aforementioned shift in how rights and powers are viewed. He claims that “We have failed to confine [the federal government’s] powers, partly because we now regard the affirmative assertion of rights as the vehicle for controlling the unwarranted assumption of governmental power.” This claim is unconvincing, however, since Massey does not provide a clear case as to just how the alleged shift in viewing powers and rights has led to a failure to confine the government’s usurpation of more and more powers. Massey’s account makes decades of misinterpretation of the Constitution by the Court seem downright innocent, an honest mistake caused by simple confusion over the conceptual relation between rights and powers. More conventional, and less benign, explanations for the disgraceful state of the Court’s jurisprudence seem adequate.
There are other, less serious, problems with Massey’s approach. First, Massey’s theory claims to work even if one adheres only to the limited-powers purpose. In this case, however, it is inexplicable why so much attention is given earlier in the book to proving that the amendment had a dual purpose, for after showing in Part II that the Ninth Amendment had dual purposes, Massey largely omits the second purpose and assumes, for the sake of argument, only the limited-powers purpose.
Second, in Part II, prior to his cy pres analysis in Part III, Massey argues, without appealing to cy pres, that one function of the amendment was to generate enforceable, unenumerated rights. It is, therefore, not clear why one needs to use cy pres to turn the limiting-powers function into the unenumerated-rights function. The unenumerated-rights function should stand alone, and can apparently be reasonably argued without the aid of constitutional cy pres. In fact, in an earlier incarnation of his theory, the doctrine of constitutional cy pres is not invoked at all. As best I can tell, the primary purpose of constitutional cy pres is to convince those who favor the limited-powers function but who shun the unenumerated-rights function that, in today’s constitutional landscape, the only way to achieve the limited-powers function is to allow the Ninth Amendment to be construed to protect unenumerated rights. Since Massey sets forth other, independent grounds for the unenumerated-rights function of the Ninth Amendment, it is not clear why constitutional cy pres is given such prominent attention in the book, nor why it is brought up again and again once this point is made. For example, Massey’s application of constitutional cy pres to the unenumerated powers purpose of the Ninth Amendment is confusing. If the unenumerated powers purpose is not impossible to attain but has merely had its legitimacy “eroded,” why is cy pres applicable at all, since the doctrine has to do with impossible or unattainable purposes?
Third, it appears to be quite an ordinary and reasonable interpretive method to try to interpret difficult or ambiguous constitutional provisions in accordance with the provision’s original objectives, just as was done in the cases cited by Massey as examples of “de facto” applications of constitutional cy pres. But this technique is just one of dozens of standard canons of interpretation of legislation or constitutional provisions, and it is not clear why all of a sudden a new terminology and doctrine is needed for this one particular technique.
Another problem with Massey’s constitutional cy pres theory is that the second and third proposals do not need constitutional cy pres to be recommended, and in fact have been advanced by others, without requiring Massey’s innovative cy pres theory. Massey himself has previously argued for the first proposal, without even mentioning consitutional cy pres. Massey seems to view the second proposal as largely subsumed by and inferior to the first and third proposals, and thus devotes most of the remainder of the book—chapters 5 and 6—to elaborating positive and natural Ninth Amendment rights.
the founding generation did not use the distinction between natural and positive rights as a basis for selection of the rights worthy of constitutional enumeration. The package of rights expressly enumerated in the Constitution contains natural and positive rights. It is a fair inference, then, that the unenumerated rights of the Ninth Amendment were thought to consist of both varieties. Positive rights had their source in state common, constitutional, and statutory law. Natural rights stemmed from Lockean notions concerning the inalienable rights of the people.
Thus, the Ninth Amendment’s unenumerated rights contain both positive and natural rights.
As Massey notes, most of the Framers looked “to the states not only as the source of, but as the vehicle for, protection of their cherished liberties.” Therefore, “[t]he inclusion of the Ninth Amendment was, in part, an attempt to be certain that rights protected by state law were not supplanted by federal law simply because they were not enumerated.” Since “the Ninth Amendment was as much an enumerated right for purposes of judicial enforcement as any other aspect of the Bill of Rights,” both types of unenumerated rights—natural rights; and positive rights having their source in state law—are subject to judicial protection. In other words, any federal law that violates an unenumerated positive (i.e., state law-based) right is subject to being stricken down by federal courts as violative of the Ninth Amendment. In giving effect to the Ninth Amendment, then, the courts are to recognize that one source of the unenumerated rights protected by the Ninth Amendment is state constitutions.
have their origin in state constitutions, the substance of federal positive Ninth Amendment rights varies with the differing state constitutions. On this view, Ninth Amendment decisional law would develop a richly variegated pattern. A federal Ninth Amendment right of privacy would be recognized with respect to Californians and Alaskans, for example, because both states explicitly recognize such a right. In contrast, Missouri does not recognize that right. As a results, the citizens of each state would be uniquely and separately entitled to define the nature of their relationship with all of their governmental agents. They would be able to do this immediately (with the state via the state constitution) and . . . mediately (with the national government via the Ninth Amendment’s incorporation of state constitutional guarantees).
Although this “state-specific” concept of positive Ninth Amendment rights would effectively result in a different federal constitutional law (with respect to the content of such rights) for each of the fifty states, Massey quite correctly points out that such a scheme is similar to the current federal practice, under Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins, under which the federal courts in diversity cases follow the state law of the appropriate state. Further, under the state-specific concept of positive Ninth Amendment rights, unlike under the uniform national concept, a state could eliminate a positive Ninth Amendment right by eliminating it from its own constitution (although the reason for this difference in treatment is unclear).
Under the national conception, Massey notes, incorporating positive Ninth Amendment rights into the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause would be likely, and would result in the constitutional rights of one state being used to override contrary rights in other states. For example, suppose Louisiana provides for a constitutional right of the fetus to life; while most other states provide for a constitutional right of a woman to have an abortion performed. Further suppose that the Supreme Court decides that the right to abortion is to a positive Ninth Amendment right. In this case, the local decision of some states with respect to the abortion issue would be used to trump the decisions of other states. For this reason, “[t]he incorporation problem would be experienced most acutely if a national concept of positive Ninth Amendment rights were adopted. The state-specific concept . . . avoids these problems.” In the end, after much vacillating and considering the myriad and complicated pros and cons of each of the national and state-specific concepts of positive Ninth Amendment rights, Massey tentatively comes down in favor of the state-specific conception.
Before assessing any further the merits of Massey’s theory, I will first turn to Massey’s discussion, in Chapter 6, of natural Ninth Amendment rights.
After the long discussion in Chapter 5 concerning positive Ninth Amendment rights, Massey argues, in Chapter 6, that the Ninth Amendment should also be read to include natural rights, rights that are “prepolitical retained rights.” (Although Massey asserts, inexplicably and without support, that “the fact is that there is probably no such thing.”) As in his theory of positive Ninth Amendment rights, Massey’s theory of natural Ninth Amendment rights also bears some innovative features.
Massey begins by noting that we should not “expunge natural law from the Constitution”; however, the attempt to inject natural law into constitutional adjudication must be tempered by the realization that “[n]atural law cannot be forced on an unwilling and disbelieving community.” Also, natural Ninth Amendment rights are difficult to determine, and judges and legislators are inherently fallible “as the prophets of natural Ninth Amendment rights.” Thus, there should be a role for natural Ninth Amendment rights, but they should given only “contingent” status, so as to provide “an iterative dialogue between the courts and legislatures whenever the subject is the content or scope of natural Ninth Amendment rights.” This iterative dialogue is meant to ensure that there is “a sufficiently widely shared cultural understanding to support recognition” of an asserted natural right.
Whereas Massey is not quite sure whether state-specific positive Ninth Amendment rights would be applicable to the states via the incorporation doctrine, he is not so hesitant regarding natural Ninth Amendment rights. Since natural rights are “prepolitical entitlements,” they are necessarily “fundamental” in the sense relevant to the Fourteenth Amendment. Thus, any recognized natural Ninth Amendment rights presumably would be applicable against the states by the incorporation doctrine, since the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is seen as incorporating rights of sufficient fundamentality.
I have mentioned above some problems with Massey’s constitutional cy pres theory. At this point, it is appropriate to address further weakness that have been revealed in Massey’s theory. Most seriously, Massey’s argument that the Ninth Amendment actually does incorporate state-sourced rights is unconvincing. The contention seems to be pulled out of thin air, not rooted in the text or history of the Constitution. The Ninth Amendment does not state this, for example, and even if it was understood in 1791 to protect the set of natural rights, some of which happened to also be enumerated at the time in state constitutions, there is no reason to think that new positive rights subsequently added to various state constitutions were to be included in the original set of natural rights contemplated by the Ninth Amendment.
Furthermore, regardless of the merits of Massey’s reasoning in support of the thesis that the Ninth Amendment protects state-sourced unenumerated rights, I fail to see how this reasoning is strengthened by appeal to the constitutional cy pres doctrine. Both his theories of natural and positive Ninth Amendment rights seem to be supported by quite respectable reasoning that is independent of cy pres-type reasoning. Indeed, Massey’s constitutional cy pres doctrine seems to be more of an afterthought, a sophisticated justification or overarching framerwork added after-the-fact to his original insight that the Ninth Amendment might be read to directly incorporate state-sourced rights.
Additionally, even if we accept Massey’s contention that the Ninth Amendment ought to incorporate state-sourced rights, why would this include only rights explicitly enumerated in state constitutions? As in the federal system, some rights might be protected by the states in other ways—by decisions of their supreme court, by legislation, by common law, or even by mere state practice. In Louisiana, for example, a civil-law jurisdiction, its Civil Code, according to the civilian tradition, is treated more like a constitution than like mere legislation. Massey’s focus on state constitutions does avoid the seemingly insurmountable problems that his theory would face if all of these potential state sources of rights were to be considered, but the focus seems arbitrary, nonetheless.
Massey’s theory is also worrisome because it gives natural rights relatively short shrift in comparison to positive rights. Massey’s discussion of the latter is much longer than the former. Also, unlike positive Ninth Amendment rights, which would presumably be very large in number due to the potentially unlimited number of rights provided in state constitutions, Massey’s natural Ninth Amendment rights would likely be very few in number. Natural Ninth Amendment rights are also to be granted only reluctantly, and have only contingent status. Massey does not similarly insist that the Court’s recognition of positive Ninth Amendment rights be only contingent. Further, Massey provides no method for resolving conflicts between incompatible natural and positive Ninth Amendment rights, and, indeed, does not even allude to the possibility of such a conflict. This is inexplicable, given Massey’s extended discussions of how to resolve potential incompatibilities between Ninth Amendment rights and other (federal) constitutional rights.
Consider, for example, the following conflict between natural and positive rights. Assume that the original understanding of Ninth Amendment rights is largely consistent with the libertarian conception of rights as being strictly negative rights, that is, rights against aggression, the initiation of force. In this case, one could very well argue that there is a natural Ninth Amendment right against having one’s property forcibly taken by the government and redistributed as welfare benefits to others. Now suppose that California enshrines various welfare rights in its constitution—a right to education, to housing, to a minimum income, and the like (in contravention to natural law). Under Massey’s doctrine of positive Ninth Amendment rights, this could also result in a federal Ninth Amendment right to these things, at least for California citizens, under the state-specific conception. This would be a disastrous result, if only because an illegitimate conception of rights, formerly localized to California—and such localization of policy is one of the benefits of federalism—is now imposed on the federal government.
Even worse, under the national concept of positive Ninth Amendment rights, the federal government (acting through its agent, the Supreme Court) could adopt this welfare right as a positive Ninth Amendment right of national scope, and force all the states to provide education and welfare rights, an even worse attack on the principle of federalism, and an illegitimate result, to boot (since there are, in truth, no such welfare rights). The only possible saving grace to this situation would be if the courts were to find that the natural Ninth Amendment right to not have one’s property expropriated and redistributed to others somehow outweighed the positive Ninth Amendment welfare right. But, as I mentioned before, Massey does not address how such potential conflicts between natural and positive Ninth Amendment rights would be resolved. Additionally, lest it be thought that my interpretation that Massey’s theory would yield positive rights is paranoid, let me point out that Massey himself explicitly states that the Ninth Amendment, when interpreted under today’s conceptions of rights, might require non-negative rights such as welfare rights.
In identifying what these rights are, the various techniques proposed by Massey, Barnett, and others are useful. It seems reasonable that one way to discover the content of the natural rights included within the scope of the Ninth Amendment would be to examine the rights guaranteed by state constitutions, especially since, as Massey points out, protection of natural rights was to be left primarily to the states. However, in this view state-sourced rights are merely evidence for what are the actual rights in the set of natural rights protected by the Ninth Amendment. Whether these rights are dynamic and ever evolving and growing, as Massey maintains, or static, is another question, but I am unconvinced by Massey’s argument that both positive and natural Ninth Amendment rights should be envisioned as changing with the times. It is a written constitution that we are interpreting, after all. Further, given that the modern conception of rights and legitimate state power is thoroughly statist, the Framers’ conception of rights is vastly preferable, at least for anyone who favors individual rights. (For example, as mentioned above, the dynamic view of unenumerated rights might result in the cross-pollination and thus spreading of (illegitimate) welfare-type rights.) Thus, interpreting the Constitution in accordance with its original (that is, “static”) understanding is preferable to reading socialist rights into it, as it is a more honest interpretation and also more likely to be in accord with individual rights.
Finally, there is another serious weakness in Massey’s theory. As Massey readily acknowledges, one of the original purposes of the Constitution was federalism, the sovereignty of each state. Indeed, one of Massey’s reasons to support constitutional cy pres and positive Ninth Amendment rights is to help limit the powers (though indirectly, by trumping these powers with Ninth Amendment rights) that the federal government has illegitimately usurped over the years. Yet there can be little doubt that, in this age of an untrustworthy federal government and Supreme Court, expanding the Court’s jurisdiction to declare rights would result in the further weakening of federalism.
In other words, the central government cannot be trusted to safely exercise any extra power that is given to it, even if the purpose of the power is ostensibly to protect rights. Accordingly, as Paul Conkin has noted, “Ironically, the tremendous expansion of federal power in all areas, including the expanded role in protecting individual rights, has finally transformed the often fantastic eighteenth-century fears of a federal leviathan into prophetic admonitions.” Handing more power to the federal government, as Massey’s theory unfortunately does, would ill-serve the original understanding and purpose of the Ninth Amendment.
Unlike the Supreme Court, most modern constitutional scholars, and other alleged intellectuals, Massey takes the Ninth Amendment seriously. He has written a provocative study of the Ninth Amendment, but, because of the problems with Massey’s thesis, which I have detailed above, I believe a better approach to the Ninth Amendment may be found in the writings of other scholars, such as Randy Barnett and Marshall DeRosa.
Conclusion: Constitutional Interpretation or Political Theory?
As I pointed out before, if Massey is correct that it is too late to limit the federal government to its proper powers, it is unlikely that the Court will try to, or even want to, accomplish the same thing by trumping those powers with Ninth Amendment rights. The truth is, and I doubt Massey would demur, Massey’s theory stands no realistic chance of being adopted by the Supreme Court. From the Court’s point of view, it is too radical, too academic, and at least has the potential of imposing some limits on federal power. So Massey’s theory is not really a theory of how the Constitution should be interpreted. What, then, is it? In truth, it is a proposal to amend the Constitution.
When a national majority of each State’s chief judicial official declares a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to be inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution, the said decision shall thereby be negated and precedent restored. The States’ designated chief judicial officers shall convey their declarations to the U.S. Solicitor General, who in turn will notify the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court to take appropriate measures consistent with this amendment.
As for other potentially useful amendments, unfortunately, Sobran’s proposed amendment, “The Constitution shall not be circumvented,” would be easily circumvented, as Sobran recognized. However, Sobran proposes another “amendment that would actually restrain the federal government. It would read: ‘Any state may, by an act of its legislature, secede from the United States.’” Either Sobran’s or DeRosa’s proposed amendment (or both) would straightforwardly enhance federalism and increase the likelihood that our individual rights would be respected.
And while we’re at it, let’s amend the Constitution to repeal the incorporation doctrine. Also, we might as well eliminate judicial supremacy (sometimes confusingly referred to as “judicial review”), the idea that the Supreme Court is the sole and final arbiter of the Constitution and constitutionality. Instead, the original scheme of separation of powers required concurrent review, sometimes referred to as Jefferson’s tripartite theory of constitutionalism. Under concurrent review, each branch (executive, legislative, judicial) has an equal right to determine the constitutionality of government action.
But enough of making my wish-list. Any one of these changes would be enough to warm the heart of a true Constitutionalist.
LL.M., University of London; J.D., M.S., B.S., Louisiana State University. [For current author info as of 01-2002: see: www.stephankinsella.com.] The author would like to thank Paul Comeaux for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this review essay.
Joe Sobran, Constitutional Legerdemain, syndicated column of April 11, 1996 (reprinted in Sobran’s, May 1996, Vol. 3, no. 5, page 12).
Examples of totalitarian governments include Communist and Fascist states, both of which are types of socialism. Socialism may be defined as a system of “institutionalized interference with or aggression against private property and private property claims.” Hans-Hermann Hoppe, A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism: Economics, Politics, and Ethics 2 (1989).
To put it even more starkly: suppose the government adopts a plan to exterminate all Hungarians, at a rate of ten per day, but, for some reason, is bungling the job and is only executing one Hungarian per day. No sane person would admonish the government to speed up its executions, or even to investigate the cause of the government’s “inefficiency” in this regard. For a similar point, see Bruce L. Benson, Third Thoughts on Contracting Out, 11:1 J. Libertarian Stud. 44 (1994) (arguing that privatization of governmental services should not always be favored, even by libertarians—for example when the privatized service, such as the IRS, is unjust and increasing its efficiency would simply increase injustice). See also Randy E. Barnett, The Relevance of the Framers’ Intent, 19 Harv. J. L. & Publ. Pol’y 403, 410 (arguing that one reason we should interpret the Constitution in accordance with the Framers’ original intentions is “because we today share their intentions to limit the power of government in a way that enhances and protects the liberty of the people.”).
By individual rights, I mean the specifically libertarian conception of individual rights, in which the only fundamental right is to be free from aggression, where “‘[a]ggression’ is defined as the initiation of the use or threat of physical violence against the person or property of anyone else.” Murray N. Rothbard, For A New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto 23 (rev’d ed. 1985). The phrase “individual rights” is preferable to the phrase “human rights,” since the latter expression, like the term “liberal” in American usage, has acquired a leftist or socialist tinge. See, e.g., the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, U.N. GAOR, 217A (III) (1948), at articles 22-26 (reciting, for example, “human rights” to “social security” and to “free” “education”). Libertarian individual rights are roughly equivalent to the set of natural rights under older terminology. Libertarian justifications for the existence of individual rights include: Hoppe, supra note , esp. chapter 7; Hans-Hermann Hoppe, The Economics and Ethics of Private Property: Studies in Political Economy and Philosophy (1993); Rothbard, For A New Liberty, supra; Murray N. Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty (1982); N. Stephan Kinsella, A Libertarian Theory of Punishment and Rights, 30 Loy. L.A. L. Rev. 607 (1997); idem, New Rationalist Directions in Libertarian Rights Theory, 12:2 J. Libertarian Stud. 323 (Fall 1996); Roger A. Pilon, Ordering Rights Consistently: Or What We Do and Do Not Have Rights To, 13 Ga. L. Rev. 1171 (1979); Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (Signet, 1967); idem, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism (Signet, 1964); Leonard Peikoff, Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (1991); Tibor R. Machan, Individuals and Their Rights (1989); Douglas B. Rasmussen & Douglas J. Den Uyl, Liberty and Nature: An Aristotelian Defense of Liberal Order (1991); Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism: In the Classical Tradition (3rd ed., Ralph Raico trans. 1985); Jan Narveson, The Libertarian Idea (1988); Loren E. Lomasky, Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community (1987).
Reasons for the populace’s acquiescence might include: a sympathy with socialism over the years on the part of intellectuals and large swaths of society; the corruption wrought by democracy itself, which breeds special interest wars and the willingness to use government to get one’s piece of the pie before one is made victim by others; the welfare/warfare state, which provides recipients of redistributed tax dollars (in the form of welfare payments or government salaries) with an incentive to support ever-growing government; and public education, which inevitably results in the state propagandizing each generation of students in favor of its programs. On some of these topics, see Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Time Preference, Government, and the Process of De-Civilization—From Monarchy to Democracy, 5 J. des Economistes et des Etudes Humaines 319 (1994) (discussing systemic features of democracy that make it likely to oppress liberty); Robert Higgs, Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government (1987) (discussing the acquiescence of the public in expansions in government power during times of crisis, power which is never returned after the crisis is over, leading to a ratchet effect of growing government power with each new “crisis”); William C. Mitchell & Randy T. Simmons, Beyond Politics: Markets, Welfare, and the Failure of Bureaucracy (1994) (discussing the unintended consequences of governmental programs and the large number of special interest groups that accompany big government); Frederic Bastiat, The Law (Foundation for Economic Education ed., Dean Russell trans. 1950) (1850) (discussing ever-escalating conflicts among disparate special interest groups); Bruno Leoni, Freedom and the Law (Liberty Fund expanded 3d ed. 1991) (discussing special interest group warfare); Giovanni Sartori, Liberty and Law (1976) (discussing the tendency of citizens ruled by ever-more legislation and regulation to become more docile and accustomed to following orders, and thus to allow fundamental rights to be trammeled by the government); and Sheldon Richman, Separating School and State: How to Liberate America’s Families (1994) (tracing the history of government-sponsored education, its use as propaganda, and other pernicious effects).
Bork’s theory of original understanding is largely sound, although Bork himself occasionally misapplies his own theory, e.g. with respect to the Ninth Amendment. See Robert H. Bork, The Tempting of America: The Political Seduction of the Law 143-45 et seq., 183-85 (1990). Original understanding should not be confused with original intent (as it often is). The “original intent” of the Framers is relevant only insofar as it is evidence for what the public’s “original understanding” of the Constitution was.
Regarding the presumption of governmental legitimacy, Professor Barnett makes the interesting and promising argument that the necessary assumption that citizens have a moral obligation to obey positive law presumes that there be some mechanism to ensure that the laws generated by the legislature and enforced by the executive are legitimate laws. Under our system of government, this requires Ninth Amendment-based judicial review of legislation to provide a sort of “quality control” to ensure the promulgated laws do not infringe the citizens’ enumerated or unenumerated rights. Randy E. Barnett, The Ninth Amendment and Constitutional Legitimacy, 64 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 37 (1988), reprinted in 2 The Rights Retained by the People (Randy E. Barnett ed., 1993). See also idem, Getting Normative, the Role of Natural Rights in Constitutional Adjudication, 12 Const. Commentary 93, 100 (1995); idem, The Intersection of Natural Rights and Positive Constitutional Law, 25 Conn. L. R. 853 (1993); and idem, Implementing the Ninth Amendment, in 2 The Rights Retained by the People, supra.
Another option, of course, is to attempt to have the Constitution amended so as to better serve liberty. U.S. Const. art. V.
Calvin R. Massey, Silent Rights: The Ninth Amendment and the Constitution’s Unenumerated Rights (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995) [hereinafter, Massey, without further cross-reference].
Massey, at 7 (citing Alex Kozinski, It Is a Constitution We Are Expounding, 1987 Utah L. Rev. 977).
The Tenth Amendment reads: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people.” U.S. Const. amend. X.
For discussions of the Supreme Court’s various misinterpretations of the Constitution, see Bork, supra note ; Henry Mark Holzer, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Supreme Court and Individual Rights (1983); Bernard H. Siegen, Economic Liberties and the Constitution (1980); Economic Liberties and the Judiciary (James A. Dorn & Henry G. Manne, eds., 1987); Raoul Berger, The Fourteenth Amendment and the Bill of Rights (1989); idem, Government by Judiciary: The Transformation of the Fourteenth Amendment (1977).
See supra note for the text of the Tenth Amendment.
78. See also id. at 80, 106.
Massey, at 97; see also La. R.S. 9:2331 (relating to cy pres).
83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 36 (1873).
See 100-101, discussing Hans v. Louisiana, 134 U.S. 1 (1890) (Eleventh Amendment); 102-104, discussing Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) (Fourteenth Amendment).
See the works cited in note , infra.
In fact, given that these proposals would seem to be equally unacceptable to the ruling elites, the Framers’ view of the complementary nature of rights and powers seems correct, not “sloppy thinking about the methodology of protecting human liberty,” as Massey claims we now tend to regard the founding generation’s view that the “the distinction between rights and powers [is] of no consequence.” 79.
Again, see the works cited in note , infra.
See Calvin R. Massey, Antifederalism and the Ninth Amendment, in 2 The Rights Retained by the People, supra note , at 267, 277 (originally published at 64 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 987 (1989)) (arguing “that individual liberties secured by state constitutions against state invasion were federalized by the ninth amendment,” without resort to a “cy pres” theory, without even resorting to the argument that it is “too late” or “impossible” to now use the Ninth Amendment to limit government powers directly); idem, Federalism and Fundamental Rights: The Ninth Amendment, in 1 The Rights Retained by the People, supra note , at 291 (originally published at 38 Hastings L.J. 305 (1987)). Massey’s first discussion of constitutional cy pres, of which I am aware, came after these two articles, in The Natural Law Component of the Ninth Amendment, 61 U. Cin. L. Rev. 49 (1992).
For example, a law should be interpreted, if possible, so as not to produce absurd or unconstitutional results. One explicit canon of interpretation in Louisiana is: “When a law is clear and unambiguous and its application does not lead to absurd consequences, the law shall be applied as written and no further interpretation may be made in search of the intent of the legislature.” La. Civ. Code. art. 9 (1996).
As Ayn Rand explained in her doctrine known as “Rand’s Razor”: “The requirements of cognition determine the objective criteria of conceptualization. They can be summed up best in the form of an epistemological ‘razor’: concepts are not to be multiplied beyond necessity—the corollary of which is: nor are they to be integrated in disregard of necessity.” Ayn Rand, The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z 403 (Harry Binswanger ed., 1986) (entry “Rand’s Razor”). See also note , supra, and accompanying text.
See, e.g., Laurence Tribe & Michael Dorf, On Reading the Constitution, 54, 111, 110 (1991) (cited by Massey, n.20, p.245) (suggesting the second proposal); and works by Barnett, supra note (suggesting the third proposal).
See note , supra, and accompanying text.
the symbiotic relationship between the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. The Tenth Amendment . . . was intended to complement the power limiting aspect of the Ninth Amendment. If the Ninth Amendment was intended in part to prevent the accretion of federal power implied by virtue of the existence of enumerated rights exempt from the reach of federal power, the Tenth Amendment was designed to prevent the accretion of federal power by implication from any other source in the Constitution. . . . Both Amendments were intended to preserve to the people of the states the sovereign’s prerogative to confer powers upon their state governmental agents (recognized in the Tenth Amendment) and to maintain all manner of individual rights secure from governmental invasion (recognized in the Ninth Amendment). An intended medium for doing so, in both cases, was the state constitution.
Massey, Federalism and Fundamental Rights, supra note , at 314, 315 & n. 109.
U.S. Const. amend. XIV; Massey, 138; Berger, The Fourteenth Amendment and the Bill of Rights; idem, Government by Judiciary, supra note .
My own example, not Massey’s.
137; 186. But see id. at 138 (“it is not clear that the best concept of the substantive content of positive Ninth Amendment rights is state-specific”).
In the remainder of chapter 5, Massey addresses many other issues related to implementing positive Ninth Amendment rights. For example, a state-specific positive Ninth Amendment right could be incompatible with a constitutional right based in federal law. Massey at 147-72. In this case, Massey recommends that one right be chosen over another by examining the competing rights’ “constitutional fundamentality” and by engaging in a complicated balancing test.
Thomas McAffee has concluded that “Massey’s claim that the Ninth Amendment secures state-created rights as affirmative limitations on federal power had not been advanced by a single commentator between 1789 and the 1980s. This reading, moreover, presents an incoherent amalgamation of diametrically opposed readings of the text and history of the Ninth Amendment.” Thomas B. McAffee, Federalism and the Protection of Rights: The Modern Ninth Amendment’s Spreading Confusion, 1996 B.Y.U. L. Rev. 351, 374.
Indeed, as Massey himself points out, “Positive rights had their source in state common, constitutional, and statutory law.” 118.
Puerto Rico is also a civil-law jurisdiction, although it is not, as of this writing, a state.
In civil-law systems, a code is more like a constitution, which changes only rarely, relative to legislation. See Jean Louis Bergel, Principal Features and Methods of Codification, 48 La. L. Rev. 1073, 1079 (1988); Vernon Palmer, The Death of a Code—The Birth of a Digest, 63 Tul. L. Rev. 221, 235 (1988).
Query: Under this approach, would previously recognized unenumerated rights suddenly become merely contingent?
See, e.g., Massey, at 142-72; 193-94.
See, e.g., works by Barnett, supra note ; and The Rights Retained by the People (2 vols.), supra note . For an (unconvincing) opposing view, see Raoul Berger, The Ninth Amendment, As Perceived by Randy Barnett, 88 Nw.U. L. Rev. 1508 (1994).
Randy E. Barnett, Introduction: James Madison’s Ninth Amendment, in 1 The Rights Retained by the People, supra note , at 1, 33. See also note , supra (discussing Randy Barnett’s “constitutional legitimacy” argument for judicial enforcment of unenumerated Ninth Amendment rights). There is another argument in favor of protecting unenumerated rights by the Ninth Amendment. The Constitution was ratified in 1789 only on the understanding that a bill of rights would be added. However, since the Bill of Rights was not completed and adopted until 1791, at the time of ratification the rights that were to be added by a bill of rights were unspecified. Since these rights were unspecified, but the Constitution was initially conceived as being limited by whatever these rights were, merely enumerating some of these rights at a later time in the Bill of Rights does not necessarily exhaust all the background rights that could have been enumerated in the Bill of Rights. I.e., there is no guarantee that the Bill of Rights captured all the rights the enumeration of which the Constitution’s ratification was dependent on. Thus, for the ratification to be effective and thus for the Constitution to have validity, the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights cannot be seen as an exhaustive list. For a complementary argument, see Randy E. Barnett, Reconceiving the Ninth Amendment, 74 Cornell L. Rev. 1, 29 (“Only a handful of the many rights proposed by state ratification conventions were eventually incorporated in the Bill of rights. The Ninth Amendment was offered precisely to ‘compensate’ these critics for the absence of an extended list of rights.”).
See text accompanying notes -, supra.
See text accompanying note , supra.
See, e.g., Massey, at 56. See also Martin H. Redish, The Constitution as Political Structure (1995); Raoul Berger, Federalism: The Founders’ Design (1987); Paul K. Conkin, Self-Evident Truths: Being a Discourse on the Origins & Development of the First Principles of American Government—Popular Sovereignty, Natural Rights, and Balance & Separation of Powers (1974); Bork, The Tempting of America, supra note , at 52-53 et pass.; John C. Calhoun, Union and Liberty: The Political Philosophy of John C. Calhoun (Ross M. Lence, ed., 1992) (discussing the advantages of federalism). For Massey’s own views of the importance of federalism, see Massey, Federalism and Fundamental Rights, supra note .
See, e.g., notes -, supra, and accompanying text.
See, e.g., Marshall L. DeRosa, The Ninth Amendment and the Politics of Creative Jurisprudence: Disparaging the Fundamental Right of Popular Control (1996) [hereinafter, DeRosa, The Ninth Amendment].
See text accompanying notes – and , supra.
See the sources cited in note , supra.
See the quote by Massey in the text at note , supra. See also McAffee, supra note , at 386 (“Recognizing that the Supremacy Clause and structural analysis cannot do all of the work required to avoid unwelcome outcomes of his states’ rights thesis, Massey eventually simply delegates to the Supreme Court the task of preventing potential state abuses that such a guarantee might permit.”).
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics 692 (3d rev’d ed. 1966).
Conkin, Self-Evident Truths, supra note , at 141.
See works by Barnett, supra note ; and DeRosa, The Ninth Amendment, supra note .
See notes -, supra, and accompanying text.
DeRosa, The Ninth Amendment, supra note .
Id. at 192. As of this writing, this proposed amendment had not yet been adopted. This amendment wouldbe prefereable to that recently suggested by Robert Bork, since Bork’s amendment would have little positive effect on federalism. Robert H. Bork, Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline 117 (1996) (proposing a constitutional amendment to make “any federal or state court decision subject to being overruled by a majority vote of each House of Congress.”).
DeRosa, The Ninth Amendment, supra note , at 193.
See the text at note , the opening quote to this article.
Sobran, supra note , at 12.
The proposed amendments are also consistent with Jefferson’s “belief that the states were the prime interpeters of the federal compact.” Conkin, Self-Evident Truths, supra note , at 72.
See David N. Mayer, The Constitutional Thought of Thomas Jefferson 131, 259, 263, 269-72; William J. Quirk & R. Randall Bridwell, Judicial Dictatorship xiv, 10-11, 13 (1995); Conkin, Self-Evident Truths, supra note , at 69-73.
“We Americans are lucky indeed to have inherited our Constitution and our classical liberal tradition. For suppose we had inherited a totalitarian form of government, a government that did not respect property rights or other individual rights, which arbitrarily discriminated against—even executed, or exterminated—certain classes of its subjects from time to time.” Apparently, the author, Kinsella, overlooked the enslavement of the African in North America, the post bellum discrimination against blacks, the arbitrary execution of millions of Native Americans, the dispossession of Mexicans post 1848, the loss of liberty, and property by Japanese Americans arbitrarily imprisoned in concentration camps. Those acts are those of the framers and their heirs. It is this legacy of arbitrary authoritarianism, which enables a Supreme Court to ratify summary execution in Mullenix v. Luna, 577 U.S. ___, when no single officer can articulate probable cause, much less reasonable suspicion, to believe imminent bodily injury required to justify the use of deadly force. Summary execution, coerced confessions, torture, and some other act of misconduct by the government happen every single day. We simply blind ourselves to it, rather than learn, repent, and atone.
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