[IMC-Editorial] Letter to the Editor on Supreme Court's Sodomy Decision

[The Ayn Rand Institute]

Dear Editor:

Contrary to Justices Thomas and Scalia, the Constitution does require
the Supreme Court to strike down Texas's antisodomy law. The Ninth
Amendment clearly states that the mere fact that a right is not
enumerated in the Constitution shall not be construed to deny or
disparage it. The Constitution envisions that the Federal Government
shall have no powers but those granted it in that document--that everything
not specifically authorized to the government is forbidden.

The "privileges and immunities" that citizens thereby enjoy are
equally protected from infringement by state governments according to
the Fourteenth Amendment, as intended by those who framed and ratified
it.

The Constitution was enacted, not to permit democratic majorities to
enforce their whims, but to restrict the power of government
regardless of anyone's will. Justice Stanley Matthews put this well:
"Arbitrary power, enforcing its edicts to the injury of the persons
and property of its subjects, is not law, whether manifested as the
decree of a personal monarch or of an impersonal multitude. And the
limitations imposed by our constitutional law upon the action of the
governments, both state and national, are essential to the
preservation of public and private rights, notwithstanding the
representative character of our political institutions. The
enforcement of these limitations by judicial process is the device of
self-governing communities to protect the rights of individuals and
minorities, as well against the power of numbers, as against the
violence of public agents transcending the limits of lawful authority,
even when acting in the name and wielding the force of the
government."

Sincerely,

Paul Blair
Ayn Rand Institute

2121 Alton Parkway, #250
Irvine, CA  92606
United States
(818) 706-9361

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