Power to the people.
Michael S. Lorrey wrote:
> GBurch1@aol.com wrote:
>
> > In a message dated 4/2/00 2:16:53 PM Central Daylight Time,
> > retroman@turbont.net writes:
> >
> > > But only in that most courts today seem to have total ignorance or
> > > distain for the 9th Amendment, and are drifting away from the founders
> > > concepts of Natural Law. Under the 9th, any rights not enumerated in the
> > > Constitution are retained by the people, as individuals, so it follows
> > > that since privacy is not explicitly mentioned, it is a 9th Amendment
> > > right.
> >
> > I don't read the IXth ammendment this way. The text says:
> >
> > The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights,
> > shall not be construed to deny or disparage others
> > retained by the people.
> >
> > I'm no constitutional law scholar, but this just seems to say "The fact that
> > a subject is addressed in the Constitution doesn't mean that it excludes
> > other rights the people may have," or alternatively, "the Constitution is not
> > an exhaustive enumeration of rights."
>
> The way I read it is that any rights addressed by name in the Constitution do not
> exceed or override any rights the people may posess which are not named in the
> Constitution. The 9th amendment deals with rights, while the Xth deals with
> POWERS, not rights.
>
> > Are you thinking of the Xth ammendment?
> >
> > 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.
> >
> > Which I have always taken to simply mean that the Founders intended that the
> > federal government be a LIMITED government, with only explicitly enumerated
> > powers. (The Xth ammendment has always seemed a little foggy in it's last
> > clause -- probably intentionally so -- as to the division of power between
> > people and states . . .)
>
> Because it deals with powers, not rights, it deals with basically stating that
> governmental powers outside of those dealt with in the constitution, are to be
> hashed out by the citizens of the respective states as to whether those
> governmental powers are to be managed at the state or local level, as they choose
> to define it in their state constitutions and laws.
The only powers of the government (in the U.S.) are those given it by its citizenry.
We have the Constitution to describe how this is done, and the government which does
what it can get away with and more.
So, besides Constitutional scholarship, we need to take a cold, hard look at what
travesties of justice and freedom that some elements of the government have and will
attempt to inflict upon the citizenry, fight against these attacks upon freedom and
see them eliminated, and be ever vigilant against tyranny.
The Constitution may be amended by popular vote, this was put into the Constitution
in one regard to enable the people to enact amendments to the Constitution regardless
to what may have been a corrupt or unresponsive legislature or executive branch.
So, maybe it is perhaps more an appropriate time to consider some more rights that
people hold to be self-evident and explicitly enumerate them. One is privacy, and
then all those who do not gain from exploiting the privacy of others will be in
better shape. Something like: "the citizens shall have the right to be free of
exploitation of their privacy" or "the people have the right to a rational level of
privacy". In the turn-of-phrase aof number I, "the Congress shall make no law nor
allow governmental action which abridges the right to privacy."
Personally, on a separate issue, I am trying to figure out how to bill any such spam
that comes my way. Accoding to the fax machine law, people sent unsolicited faxes
are able to recoup their damages or $500, whatever is more, this law was extended to
modems and other electronic devices. So, there could be a series of class actions
against largely unnamed spamming defendants, so whenever one receives an unsolicited
unagreed upon spam then that could be forwarded to the spam reward reclamation
center, where the sender of spam would be determined by forwarding mailer and then
summarily a motion for $500 for each spam e-mail or damages, whichever is greater,
filed against them in their local jurisdiction by electronic form.
An interesting set of four letters: copr.
Ross
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:09:02 MDT