Does the Constitution guarantee Americans a right to privacy?

[AzogtheDefiler]

Are you paranoid?

Are you reading RawStory?

 

[AzogtheDefiler]

The 4th guarantees: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated ....

Search - verb
try to find something by looking or otherwise seeking carefully and thoroughly.

It means the government is not allowed to look in your house, or at your papers, or at your effects. (simple definition)

Unless they get a search warrant from a judge via a bogus claim. Right?

 

[progressive hunter]

The 4th guarantees: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated ....

Search - verb
try to find something by looking or otherwise seeking carefully and thoroughly.

It means the government is not allowed to look in your house, or at your papers, or at your effects. (simple definition)

privacy has many faces,,

 

[Dante Reawakened]

It does guarantee a right for those who have power to not make anything worse for anyone they deem to not be subservient to their demands. The people in government fiefdoms can spread word to private businesses on anyone. And they do. Well, some of the people go off the rails and others die.

Cant find the right to privacy discussed.

 

[okfine]

Are you reading RawStory?

Not today. Are you watching gay porn?

 

[DGS49]

While there are privacy rights enumerated in the Amendments, there is no right of privacy.

It's one of those things that sounds nice, but is insidious in practice.

By proclaiming a totally-undefined right of privacy, the Leftist Supreme Court placed no limits on what this right might entail. Does it include the right to do anything to oneself (or in connection with another consenting adult) that one wants? If that is the argument, then one must presume that the Framers of the Constitution had no idea what they were creating. Because at the time, sodomy was a crime, adultery was a crime, abortion was a crime, gambling was a crime, many communities had prohibited the consumption of hard liquor. All of the authors of the Bill of Rights were aware of these facts, and yet NONE of them saw any conflict between these laws and the Bill of Rights. So if they had any inkling that they were nullifying these laws, they were strangely silent about it.

And where does the RIght of Privacy end? Incest? Beastiality? Suicide? The narcotic of your choice? Because it is undefined, it is undefinable and meaningless.

What about gambling? The states continue to regulate gambling in order to protect their own interests, but why wouldn't gambling come under the umbrella of "privacy."

Because RvW was largely based on this non-existent "Constitutional RIght," it has been hanging by a thread since it was first published. THis is why Leftists in the Senate have always been so adamant about asking court nominees to promise that they will pay obeisance to Roe v. Wade. They don't go through that Kabuki dance with any other case, do they? Because they know it was such a horrible decision that ultimately it would be struck down.

And furthermore, RvW is a grotesque example of "legislating from the bench." The Supreme Court has NO POWER and NO BUSINESS setting policy for the U.S. That is a function that the Constitution reserves for the legislatures. Again, trying to influence the justices because you want to push a public policy matter is bullshit. THey do not make policy.

 

[meaner gene]

Unless they get a search warrant from a judge via a bogus claim. Right?

There are no limits to what rights can be violated if someone is willing to commit perjury in order to do so.

 

[task0778]

The above is a well informed and cogent summary of the matter with one exception.

Roe v. Wade is predicated on the Griswold v. Connecticut line of decidendi regarding a supposed constitutional right of privacy.

In legal terms penumbra is most often used as a metaphor describing a doctrine that refers to implied powers of the federal government. The doctrine is best known from the Supreme Court decision of GRISWOLD V. CONNECTICUT, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S. Ct. 1678, 14 L. Ed. 2d 510 (1965), where Justice WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS used it to describe the concept of an individual's constitutional right of privacy.​

​

Writing for the majority in Griswold v. Connecticut, Douglas "used the term [more at cited the doctrine] when he wanted to refer to a peripheral area or an indistinct boundary of something specific."​

In his opinion, Douglas "stated that the specific guarantees of the BILL OF RIGHTS have penumbras "formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance," and that the right to privacy exists within this area [i.e., the area of contraception].​

​

Since Griswold, the penumbra doctrine has primarily been used to represent implied powers that emanate from a specific rule, thus extending the meaning of the rule into its periphery or penumbra.​

Read more: Penumbra - Further Readings - Justice, Griswold, Holmes, and Decision - JRank Articles Penumbra - Further Readings​

Griswold v. Connecticut declared that this right of general privacy is implicitly inherent to the collective penumbra of the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Amendments.

Hence, the right of privacy was formally established in Griswold v. Connecticut, and in Roe v. Wade, the Court extended this penumbra of privacy to entail relatively unfettered access to abortion during the first two trimesters.

OK, as I understand it then, the right to privacy is implied and inherent to other explicitly stated rights. One might suppose establishing that privacy right would be on a case by case basis that IMHO ought to be determined by legislation rather than 9 unelected people. Otherwise I think there's gotta be an anchor somewhere in the US Constitution or in our fundamental liberties from which you can a link to the right to an abortion, and I don't see anything anywhere. Prior to Roe v. Wade, abortion had been illegal throughout much of the country since the late 19th century, so it wasn't a fundamental liberty. How then can the Supreme Court rule that it was a fundamental right? And arbitrarily they setup guidelines for which abortions would be legal or not, which is clearly outside their purview. THEY decided when an abortion is okay and when it wasn't. Based on what? Clearly that is a usurpation of the legislative branch of gov't at every level of gov't.

 

[fncceo]

Yes. But my understanding of the law is that such searches or seizures do not trump the imperative of due process sans a legitimate suspicion that one has committed an unlawful act.

A safety search, one done as part of an arrest or when search is a condition of entry to a location, can become an evidentiary search if illicit items are discovered.

The location of such items creates probable cause.

 

[meaner gene]

privacy has many faces,,

As long as what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas it's privacy. Of course privacy is not guaranteed when the person themselves breech that right.
It's like the right to remain silent, but anything you say, can and will be used against you.

 

[Pellinore]

I get that rights are natural. But they are given or taken away by man not God.

You're missing the entire point of the Constitution.

Medieval thinking said that people had rights only because someone (such as the King) granted them, and since he granted them, he can take them away. Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke said that many rights are not granted by humans but by "our Creator" (whoever you feel that to be) and therefore governments cannot take them away. The miracle of the Constitution was that the Founding Fathers established that idea as one of our bedrock principles, making us the first nation in the history of humanity to be built on that idea.

Our entire nation is built on the idea that the Constitution doesn't grant anyone any rights, it only lists the ones that everyone, everywhere has. We only control what happens within our own borders, of course, but once you step inside our jurisdiction, the Constitution instructs our government to defend the rights that your Creator gave you, no matter who you are.

 

[ThisIsMe]

Some would argue the 4th ammendment was dealing with the right to privacy, some would say it was specifically about government intrusion in one's personal affairs.

The fact is, the constitution doesn't spell out a right to privacy, nor should it.

We don't need a document to tell us we need it, it's just understood and inherent that everybody should be able to enjoy their privacy.

We need to stop looking at the government as the "granter of rights", and start looking at the constitution as what it is, a set of rules to limit the government.

The problem is, scotus decided on a right to privacy, and abortion activists said "they made abortion legal!", which isn't true, they just said that women should have the right to privacy in their medical decisions.

We still have laws though, that restrict things. Scotus doesn't have the power to codify anything into law, that's for the Legislature, so, their decision on roe couldn't have made abortion legal.

 

[meaner gene]

While there are privacy rights enumerated in the Amendments, there is no right of privacy.

It's one of those things that sounds nice, but is insidious in practice.

By proclaiming a totally-undefined right of privacy, the Leftist Supreme Court placed no limits on what this right might entail. Does it include the right to do anything to oneself (or in connection with another consenting adult) that one wants? If that is the argument, then one must presume that the Framers of the Constitution had no idea what they were creating.

They guaranteed the government could not look in your house, or at your papers or effects, except by getting a search warrant, supported by sworn affidavit.

P.S. nowhere is there a power of government to be able to check inside peoples homes to see if any laws have been violated. Except upon proof, the laws were already violated.

 

[NewsVine_Mariyam]

Assuming this is true about Heck, he is technically wrong per judicial fiat. See post #29. The problem is the imbecilic reasoning of Roe v. Wade that extended this general constitutional penumbra of privacy to entail access to abortion against the interests of the several states and the people thereof.

The Supreme Court has previously ruled regarding the people's right to privacy, in a rather famous landmark ruling.

Defining Privacy​

[snipped]​

​

In 1928, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis defined privacy as "the right to be left alone":​

​

The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. … They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfaction of life are to be found in material things. … They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the government, the right to be left alone—the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. 1​

​

According to Brandeis, then, privacy is one of the "conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness." Other scholars and thinkers have identified privacy as one of the conditions necessary for the development of individual identity, for the establishment of intimacy, and for the functioning of democracy.​

​

Focusing in particular on informational privacy, computer scientist Michael McFarland, SJ, has written,​

Reverence for the human person … as an autonomous being requires respect for personal privacy. To lose control of one's personal information is in some measure to lose control of one's life and one's dignity. Therefore, even if privacy is not in itself a fundamental right, it is necessary to protect other fundamental rights.​

​

The U.S. Constitution does not mention a "right to privacy"; however, the Ninth Amendment states that "[t]he enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Several states' constitutions (including those of California, Hawaii, and Louisiana) do specifically include protections of the "right to privacy."
Defining Privacy​

 

[meaner gene]

Prior to Roe v. Wade, abortion had been illegal throughout much of the country since the late 19th century, so it wasn't a fundamental liberty.

The constitution was written in 1787, abortions weren't made illegal until 1850. The constitution could not foresee future events.
Hence the constitution couldn't foresee the need to protect from future events.

 

[Pellinore]

Do we?

Yes.

We know from the Ninth Amendment that there are rights that are not specifically listed in the Constitution; that is, unenumerated rights. We can determine that a right to privacy is one of them because it forms the underpinning of many other specifically enumerated rights, such as privacy of our own beliefs, privacy in our own home, protection from illegal search and seizure, and so on. The Fifth Amendment says "No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law," and privacy is one of the things that we have the liberty to enjoy.

This traces back to long before Roe v. Wade, too. Two rulings in the 1920s said that parents have the right to raise their children as they wish, and their decisions hinged on privacy. Griswold v Connecticut applied that to contraception in 1965, and Stanley v Georgia applied it to a guy who was enjoying some dirty magazines in the privacy on his own home. It becomes an issue only when it conflicts with some other right or law (you don't have the right to beat someone up in the privacy of your own home, for example), but otherwise, yes, it is a well-established unenumerated right, established deeply in our system.

 

[meaner gene]

If that is the argument, then one must presume that the Framers of the Constitution had no idea what they were creating. Because at the time, sodomy was a crime, adultery was a crime, abortion was a crime, gambling was a crime, many communities had prohibited the consumption of hard liquor. All of the authors of the Bill of Rights were aware of these facts, and yet NONE of them saw any conflict between these laws and the Bill of Rights. So if they had any inkling that they were nullifying these laws, they were strangely silent about it

They didn't consider all the possibilities, such as what if a religion formed that preached sodomy or polygamy between man and wife(s). That would have violated the 1st amendment. And any crime requires witnesses.

 

[Ringtone]

What a bunch of blathering BS. Douglas was merely a preview to our current President's deteriorating cognitive abilities. Both thought that a mumbling jumbo of words constitute rational thought and reasoning. Douglas should have been removed from SCOTUS before he soiled his diapers, but his political henchmen let him write this opinion so they wouldn't be ridiculed.

I strongly disagree! While Douglas was a progressive/collectivist hack, Griswold v. Connecticut was well-reasoned. The general right of privacy is implicitly inherent to the collective penumbra of the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Amendments.

Griswold v. Connecticut is good law. Roe v. Wade is not!

Given the underlying imperatives of natural and constitutional law, it's ridiculous to hold that this derivative right of privacy trumps the legitimate regulatory interests of the several states and the people thereof.

An absolute right to abortion on demand does not follow from Griswold v. Connecticut, let alone from the Constitution.

 

[mudwhistle]

Do we?

 

[meaner gene]

The problem is, scotus decided on a right to privacy, and abortion activists said "they made abortion legal!", which isn't true, they just said that women should have the right to privacy in their medical decisions.

Privacy of medical decisions means that only the person and their physician have a say in those medical decisions. That the government can't interfere. That the government can't outlaw any medical procedure without a compelling government interest to do so.