"Randy Barnett is a Friend of Mine. You're No Randy Barnett"

by Liberty and Power

The script writers of"Law and Order" apparently don't agree with Randy Barnett's views on the Ninth Amendment. In an episode, District Attorney Jack McCoy pontificated:

The fact that the Constitution explicitly protects some rights and not others necessarily suggests that the framers did not intend to protect those rights they chose to omit. They chose to omit privacy; therefore it must be a legal fiction.

Via Trent McBride at Catallarchy.

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Tom G Palmer - 4/5/2006

Sheldon Richman had a piece some years ago in Cato Policy Report on "Dissolving the Inkblot: Privacy as Property Right." http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/richman.html

Charles Johnson - 4/5/2006

Craig Bolton: "Further, it is questionable what such a right would involve if robust property rights were otherwise defined and enforced."

Well, O.K., but this is true of just about any other right on the books, too. (What would a freedom of the press, or free exercise of religion, or the right to keep and bear arms, involve if robust property rights were otherwise defined and enforced? Well, pretty much nothing; but I can't see how that's an argument against appealing to freedom of the press, the free exercise of religion, or the right to keep and bear arms as principles in legal reasoning about rights.)

Aeon J. Skoble - 4/4/2006

Hang on a sec. Is that quotation something that McCoy was asserting, or a reductio of a view he was criticizing? I watch every week, but I'm not recalling this particular scene.

David T. Beito - 4/4/2006

Agreed.

Craig J. Bolton - 4/4/2006

While the reasoning you quote is obviously absurd, otherwise there would be no Ninth Amendment, it is questionable whether or not there is a "right to privacy." Further, it is questionable what such a right would involve if robust property rights were otherwise defined and enforced.