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Inalienable Rights, Legal Enforceability, And American Constitutions: The Fourteenth Amendment And The Concept Of Unenumerated Rights, Thomas B. Mcaffee
Inalienable Rights, Legal Enforceability, And American Constitutions: The Fourteenth Amendment And The Concept Of Unenumerated Rights, Thomas B. Mcaffee
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It has become common to believe that those who ratified the Fourteenth Amendment “incorporated” not only the specific guarantees of the federal Bill of Rights, but also the other fundamental rights “retained by the people” in the Ninth Amendment. Even among those who acknowledge that the Ninth Amendment was originally a “federalism” provision that simply “retained” all that had not been granted as “powers” to the federal government are those who contend that, in light of the adoption of similar provisions in the state constitutions, by 1866 this language had become a free-floating affirmation of unenumerated rights. This Article attempts …
Does The Federal Constitution Incorporate The Declaration Of Independence?, Thomas B. Mcaffee
Does The Federal Constitution Incorporate The Declaration Of Independence?, Thomas B. Mcaffee
Scholarly Works
A standard view at the time of the adoption of the Constitution was that “a constitution does not in itself imply any more than a declaration of the relation which the different parts of the government have to each other, but does not imply security for the rights of individuals.” The drafters of the state constitutions had “assumed that government had all power except for specific prohibitions contained in a bill of rights.” When the federal Constitution was transmitted to the states by Congress, Nathaniel Gorham of Massachusetts defended the omission of a bill of rights based on the federal …