Retained by the People: The "Silent" Ninth Amendment and the Constitutional Rights Americans Don't Know They Have - Hardcover

Farber, Dan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465022987 ISBN 13: 9780465022984

Publisher: Basic Books, 2007

Synopsis

The Ninth Amendment lurks like an unexploded mine within the Bill of Rights. Its wording is direct: The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” However, there is not a single Supreme Court decision based on it. Even the famously ambitious Warren Court preferred to rely on the weaker support of the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause for many of its decisions on individual rights. Since that era, mainstream conservatives have grown actively hostile to the very mention of the Ninth Amendment. Daniel Farber, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, makes an informed and lucid argument for employing the Ninth Amendment in support of a large variety of rights whose constitutional basis is now shaky. The case he makes for the application of this unused amendment has profound implications in almost every aspect of our daily lives.

About this title

About the Author:

Daniel Farber earned his J.D. from the University of Illinois. He clerked for Judge Philip W. Tone of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and for Justice John Paul Stevens of the United States Supreme Court. He is one of the ten most frequently cited American legal scholars. Currently teaching at theUC-Berkeley Law School, he lives in Oakland, California.

From Publishers Weekly:

Farber, a constitutional law professor at the UC-Berkeley law school (Desperately Seeking Certainty), challenges the Supreme Court's current jurisprudence regarding "fundamental rights," arguing that rather than relying on the Constitution's due process clause, these rights—which touch on many controversial issues like abortion, consensual sex, gay marriage and the right to die—would better be supported by the Ninth Amendment. That amendment says that the enumeration of certain rights in the Constitution "shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Farber deals with the tricky question of what rights are fundamental (he concludes there is a right to terminate unwanted medical intervention but not a right to assisted suicide) and the legal basis for such rights. He also makes lucid and convincing criticisms of particular Supreme Court approaches in abortion rights, for instance. This is potentially an important book that offers a new approach to how courts should interpret the Constitution when balancing fundamental individual rights against government incursions, an approach Farber believes will hold up better to challenges than a due-process approach. Farber writes well for the general public and succeeds in building a case that will resonate with both liberals and populist-conservatives. (May)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0465022987
• ISBN 13: 9780465022984
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256