Opinion ID: 2103784
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Absence of a Savings Clause or Natural Rights Clause

Text: The second reason that the state right of privacy cannot be more broad than the federal right is because our Constitution is not structured in such a way as to permit this conclusion. I do not necessarily disagree that a right of privacy may exist in Tennessee, but the reasoning used by the Davis Court to discover the right of privacy, coupled with the structure of the Declaration of Rights itself, leads me to conclude that the scope of the right in Tennessee is, at most, co-extensive with the federal rightif for no other reason than the right of privacy enjoys significantly less constitutional foundation in this state. In Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 484, 85 S.Ct. 1678, 14 L.Ed.2d 510 (1965), the Supreme Court of the United States first stated that the federal right of privacy was actually grounded in the Ninth Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Although the right of privacy was said to be a penumbral right that emanated from other constitutional amendments, the textual basis of the right of privacy was said to be the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments. See also Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 153, 93 S.Ct. 705, 35 L.Ed.2d 147 (1973) (finding that the privacy right giving rise to a right to abortion is broad enough to fall within the Ninth Amendment or the Fourteenth Amendment). While constitutional scholars have debated whether Justice Douglas properly interpreted the Ninth Amendment in Griswold to include a general right of privacy, [2] such a right arguably falls within the plain language of that Amendment, which contemplates that other rights may exist although not specifically mentioned in the Bill of Rights. In stark contrast to the provisions of the federal Constitution, however, the Tennessee Constitution does not contain a savings clause similar to that of the Ninth Amendment into which a court could legitimately read other unenumerated rights. In fact, unlike many of our sister states, our Constitution does not even contain a general natural rights clause purporting to protect inalienable rights, which would at least lend a modicum of support to the majority's assertion concerning the presence and strength of our right of privacy. [3] Because our Constitution contains neither of these clauses, a careful and prudent examination of the Declaration of Rights counsels against holding that the right of privacy in this state is so much more broad than the corresponding federal right. Indeed, because the right of privacy cannot be textually grounded in the text of our Constitution outside of Article I, section 8, one may even rationally concludeshockingly contrary to the position taken by the majoritythat the federal right of privacy is actually the more broad of the two. To offset this lack of structural support, the majority casts a wide net over our Declaration of Rights to fish out constitutional provisions which seemingly give rise to a broad right of privacy. The majority goes so far as to declare that the right of privacy, including the right of procreational autonomy, arises from the liberty provisions of Article I, sections 1 and 2. Citation to sections 1 and 2 of Article I for this proposition is nothing short of remarkable, and in its haste, the majority even declares that [t]he provisions of the Tennessee Constitution imply protection of an individual's right to make inherently personal decisions, and to act on those decisions, without government interference. This unqualified statement is literally breathtaking, as its natural conclusion is that the government is without legitimate power to enact reasonable legislation having a direct effect on inherently personal decisions. Any reasonable and objective interpretation of these two sections simply cannot support the view that these two provisions reflect a right to be left alone by the government. Rather than providing a right to be left alone, section 2 of Article I more properly contemplates that the people have a duty to obey the reasonable laws of government, irrespective of whether those laws directly affect the people. [4] The majority should give more careful attention to the actual language of this clause, which condemns only the exercise of arbitrary power. Although the majority lauds this right to revolution, section 2 provides no such right to be left alone from reasonable legislation that has been duly enacted according to constitutional procedures. Sections 1 and 2 of Article I simply do not reflect a right of privacy in the sense that the government has no power to enact laws directly affecting its citizens, and these clauses are improperly construed when used to support striking down reasonable abortion regulations under the guise of protecting a right of privacy. When understood in their proper historical context, these provisions are really a reflection of the fundamental principal that the people are the ultimate sovereign and that all governmental power is derived from them. Even Davis did not take the questionable constitutional leap taken by the majority today, as that Court cited these two sections of Article I only to show that individual liberty is deeply embedded in our Constitutionnot to show that these clauses reflected a general right of privacy. See 842 S.W.2d at 599-600. Regrettably, this type of analysis, with its complete disregard for the language and purpose of the clause, exemplifies how willing the majority is to construe constitutional precedent to reach its desired result in this case.