The Ninth Amendment

The Text

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

What It Says

Writing some rights down does not mean those are the only rights you have. Rights not listed here still belong to the people.

What It Protects Against

The argument that a list of rights is a complete list. Federalists warned that enumerating rights would imply the government held every power not expressly denied to it. This amendment exists to defeat that inference.

Sourced to a ratification-era document. See Contemporaneous Defense below.

Problem Addressed

Opponents of a bill of rights argued that listing specific protections would imply that anything unlisted was surrendered, and that the list itself would become a ceiling rather than a floor.

Contemporaneous Defense

Madison addressed this objection directly in his June 8, 1789 speech introducing the amendments, describing it as one of the most plausible arguments against a bill of rights and proposing this clause as the answer to it. Federalist No. 84 had raised the same objection as a reason to omit a bill of rights entirely.