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Defending the Constitution
The Stocks and Pillory at Williamsburg, Virginia.
(Courtesy of the Library of Congress.)
The Ninth Amendment was designed to quiet the fears of the AntiFederalists who contended that, under the new Constitution, the Federal
government would have the power to trample on the liberties of the people because it would have jurisdiction over any right that was not explicitly protected against Federal abridgment and reserved to the States. They
argued in particular that there was an implied exclusion of trial by jury
in civil cases because the Constitution made reference to it only in criminal cases.
Written to serve as a general principle of construction, the Ninth
Amendment declares that ‘‘The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by
the people.’’ The reasoning behind the amendment springs from Hamil-