Which best describes how unenumerated rights differ from procedural and substantive rights?
A. Unenumerated rights apply only to the states.
B. Unenumerated rights are not listed in the Bill of Rights.
C. Unenumerated rights can never be defined.
D. Unenumerated rights combine procedural and substantive rights.
Answer: B. Unenumerated rights are not listed in the Bill of Rights.
Procedural and substantive rights stand out from unenumerated rights mainly based on their enumeration where the latter is not present in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. This characteristic distinguishes them from procedural rights wherein certain processes that the legal processes should undertake are protected as well as substantive rights whereby certain liberties are protected. Unenumerated rights derive from the ninth amendment where the constitution indicates that the listing of specific rights does not mean that other rights are not available to the people. It removes the argument that the list of rights as stated in the Constitution is exhaustive.
The following are examples of unenumerated rights that have been recognized by the Supreme Court; right to privacy, which was fashionable in the decisions of cases such as Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) and Roe v. Wade (1973). An example is the freedom of movement within the states which though not enshrined in the constitution as a right has been considered as a constitutional right. The freedom to marry another person has also been claimed to be an earlier unenumerated right, as far as the case of Loving v. Virginia case in 1967 as well as the recent case of Obergefell v. Hodges case in 2015, on same-sex marriages. Even though some of these rights are not mentioned in the Bill of Rights, the courts have defined them as encompassing liberty, thus preserving them under the Constitution. That is why the idea of unenumerated rights is important which means that the Constitution is capable of responding to the alterations in the society’s attitudes and principles.
Leave a Reply