NYT: “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” in Constitution
Note: Commentators John Plunket, BarrySanders20, and The Den Mother point out that the 14th Amendment gives “life, liberty, and property”. Something comical to think over: BarrySanders20 points out:
Can you imagine the mischief that could be created through judicial interpretation of a “happiness” clause in the 14th Amendment?
I shudder to think.
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Note: This wasn’t just an opinion piece. It comes straight from the Editors:
It is an eminently good thing that the anti-suicide measure would require medical specialists to keep track of veterans found to be high risks for suicide. But that’s to care for them as human beings, under that other constitutional right — to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Respect for the grave sacrifices by veterans requires the Senate to strike down the Coburn ploy and hurry this vital measure to President Bush.
Oy vey. Attention Editors: “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” is in the Declaration of Independence, among the inalienable rights of man - not the Constitution. Being a “constitutional right” would imply that it is in, you guessed it, the Constitution.
The 14th Amendment gives the right to the pursuit of happiness, and consequently to privacy. However, all three are not a constitutional right together.
Remember, though, we need to leave the real reporting up to the real media outlets, like the New York Times. We simply don’t have their fact-checking capabilities.
H/t Glenn Reynolds.
Update: Welcome to my fellow InstaPundit readers! Pull up a bar stool and grab a beer.
August 30th, 2007 at 10:31 am
The editor needs to work on his grammar.
August 30th, 2007 at 10:45 am
Without a doubt.
August 30th, 2007 at 11:27 am
>The 14th Amendment gives the right to the pursuit of happiness, and consequently to privacy. However, all three are not a constitutional right together.>
I frequently read that the Constitution “gives” us our rights; in fact, Justice Scalia has made the same error. But if you ask Justice Thomas, he’ll explain that rights are not bestowed by any document. We are born with them. The Constitution is a promise of government sanction and protection, signed by the founders.
August 30th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
I applaud the sentiment, Brennan, but would point out the 14th doesn’t mention “happiness”, though it does note that “life, liberty, or property” are among those things of which the government is precluded from depriving a Citizen without due process of law (not things we are “given”, as Tim Hay notes above)
JP
August 30th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
My copy says “life, liberty and property,” so the Times got two out of three.
Can you imagine the mischief that could be created through judicial interpretation of a “happiness” clause in the 14th Amendment?
Don’t worry. Be happy.
August 30th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
And actually, the Constitution doesn’t GUARANTEE “life, liberty, and property” at all, but merely prohibits the state from depriving any person of such “without due process of law.”
August 30th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
John Plunket, BarrySanders20, and The Den Mother,
Thank you for pointing that out. I’ll be correcting it, though the NYT remains incorrect despite their editorial layers.
August 30th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
I’m not surprised that the NYT’s editors confused the two documents. They have been looking for amendments to the Declaration of Independence for many years.
August 30th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
Being a “constitutional right” would imply that it is in, you guessed it, the Constitution.
Spoken like a true conservative. Proper libs, on the other hand, can find constitutional rights just about everywhere they look.
August 30th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
It’s been a parlor game of mine for some time, tallying up crap that liberals invent that are supposedly ‘in the Constitution”.
That the NYT pulls the same stunt comes as no suprise. If it were up to them (and they think it is), they would be in charge of rewriting the whole sorry, half-baked (in their opinion) document.
August 30th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
I seem to recall that the “pursuit of happiness” meant “material wealth” or something similar to the Founders. So, if I am correct, then “property” and the “pursuit of happiness” are very similar.
However, as other commenters here have pointed out, the NYT mangles the intent of the Constitution, i.e., the Constitution protects those freedoms FROM the government.
August 30th, 2007 at 10:10 pm
The Declaration of Independence is the foundational document of the United States of America. It says that people have the rights in question (using "pursuit of happiness" as a euphemism for "property", which was already accruing a bad name at the hands of Class Warriors). The Articles of Confederation codified the mechanism for the government of the new nation to function (but repealed none of the Declaration) until it was replaced with our present Constitution, which included this language:
Arguably, founding a nation with a document that explicitly states:
could be taken as a recognition by the Framers that such an ‘engagement’ was ‘entered into’ by those who signed the document creating the nation.
But to be sure there’s no doubt…
Amendment IX
The Declaration said it’s self-evident that we have those rights. The Articles of Confederation never repudiated them. The Ninth Amendment confirms that we still have them. Maybe the NYT isn’t all that wrong after all, just this once.
August 30th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
“could be taken as a recognition by the Framers that such an ‘engagement’ was ‘entered into’ by those who signed the document creating the nation.”
It is listed as an inalienable right endowed by your creator. That’s not a constitutional right.
“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
Let’s look up the 9th Amendment, c/o Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
“The Ninth Amendment has generally been regarded by the courts as negating any expansion of governmental power on account of the enumeration of rights in the Constitution, but the Amendment has not been regarded as further limiting governmental power. The U.S. Supreme Court explained this, in U.S. Public Workers v. Mitchell 330 U.S. 75 (1947): “If granted power is found, necessarily the objection of invasion of those rights, reserved by the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, must fail.”"
and
“Professor Laurence Tribe shares this view: “It is a common error, but an error nonetheless, to talk of ‘ninth amendment rights.’ The ninth amendment is not a source of rights as such; it is simply a rule about how to read the Constitution.”"
—-
The 9th simply states that the failure to list specific rights, can not be used to restrict the right of the people.
That doesn’t make “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” a Constitutional right.
August 31st, 2007 at 12:00 am
I would argue that a Constitution that limits the federal government to only those powers specifically enumerated within it (and those powers necessarily and logically related to those enumerated powers) and which further contains a tenth amendment that specifically states that the government cannot violate any rights that the people retain to themselves, DOES protect the right to pursue happiness. If the people don’t specifically authorize the government to violate their right to pursue happiness, the government can’t do it.
In my opinion, the entire idea behind the Constitution, that of limited, enumerated authority, is what makes the pursuit of happiness constitutional. I’m with the NY Times on this one…at least on that question.
By the way, the Times doesn’t put quote marks around the phrase, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” so it may not be implying that that phrase is contained in the text of the Constitution but merely that the notion is a constitutional one. On that, I think they’re correct.
August 31st, 2007 at 10:27 am
I put quotes around it because those were the words the NYT uses.
I’m not a lawyer. What I know is that the Constitution doesn’t give us the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
You know how I first found this story? By Glenn Reynolds calling it out as a load of bull. Glenn Reynolds being the Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee. I’d suggest arguing with him. Because right now we’re getting down to the point where we’re looking through it with a magnifying glass looking for reasons why the NYT is right.
August 31st, 2007 at 12:18 pm
Brennan,
First, I think Glenn is merely saying that the NYTimes thinks the phrase is contained in the text of the Constitution. I’m suggesting that that isn’t a necessary interpretation of the text of the editorial. And I think that, in this opinion, Glenn Reynolds, Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee, may be wrong. That happens sometimes even to the most distinguished of law professors.
Secondly, I do not read him as arguing that there is no right to pursue happiness that the Constitution might be read to protect. Whether the actual phrase is contained in the Constitution and whether the Constitution protects the people’s pursuit of happiness are two separate issues.
Third, I understand why YOU put quotes around the phrase. That’s not my point. My point is that, because the New York Times Editorial did not put quotes around the phrase, they may not be suggesting that that phrase is actually in the text of the Constitution.
Fourth, the Constitution doesn’t GIVE us ANY rights, in my opinion, as though the American people didn’t have rights before 1787. Rights are things that we have. They precede the Constitution. The Constitution merely codifies those rights and makes them justiciable when the government improperly interferes with those rights.
Fifth, I’d gladly argue with Glenn and I may do so but that doesn’t stop me from commenting here, does it?
Sixth, I’m not the sort to look through magnifying glasses to find reasons why the NYT is right. I call out the Times and other news sources quite a lot when I think they’re wrong. I defend them when I think they’re right. In this instance, I think they’re right.
August 31st, 2007 at 12:32 pm
Craig,
I’ll get back to you a little later on. I’m working on Goose Creek right now.
August 31st, 2007 at 3:11 pm
Brennan,
Take your time. What’s Goose Creek?
August 31st, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Goose Creek is the location where the now-indicted suspects were found in South Carolina. They were speeding near a naval base there, and one quickly put his laptop away when the cops pulled them over. Explosives were found in the vehicle. One will be indicted on terrorism, both on carrying explosives across state lines.
August 31st, 2007 at 6:08 pm
Ah, yes. An interesting case. There seemed to have been some confusion at the time whether what was found were bombs or home-made firecrackers and, of course, denials all around that terrorism had anything to do with it. I haven’t read much about the case since then.
September 1st, 2007 at 12:06 pm
“It is listed as an inalienable right endowed by your creator. That’s not a constitutional right.”
The constitution doesn’t endow any rights. It enumerates rights already endowed by Nature and Nature’s God. The language of the Declaration and the Ninth Amendment makes this clear. The latter speaks of rights ‘retained’ by the people. In order to retain something you must already have it.
Since the constitution doesn’t confer rights, the only meaningful use of the term ‘constitutional right’ is one that is either directly enumerated within the Constitution, or incorporated therein via reference (which is where those ‘engagements’ come into play). I contend that every word of the Declaration that is not explicitly amended or repudiated by the Constitution or Articles of Confederation is ratified by that language.
This is a stronger argument of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” being Constitutional rights than emanations of penumbras of rumors of legends creating a Constitutional “right to privacy”
September 1st, 2007 at 10:48 pm
Odd, thus far I’m the only one who’s noted the potential paradox of the NYT arguing that the gov’t should track people down in order to insure that they don’t kill themselves, yet what, exactly, is their take on assisted suicide?
hmmm…..
September 2nd, 2007 at 10:02 am
Nuance.