A modest proposal.

As the culture wars rage on, it occurs to me that a great many culture war issues – and most of the biggies – can be grouped under the broad rubric of “privacy concerns”.

The law of “privacy” in the U.S. has undergone massive changes in the past half-century or so.

In Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Court, citing a relatively recent dissent in a similar case, cited a right to privacy that precluded the state from regulating the use of contraceptives by married couples. Seven years later, Eisenstadt v. Baird expanded on this case and struck down a law barring the sale of contraceptives to unmarried couples. In 1973, Roe v. Wade extended the privacy conceit to include abortion in some cases. Its companion case, Doe v. Bolton, created a giant loophole so as to bring about the current regime of abortion-on-demand. The most recent major case in the Griswold line is Lawrence v. Texas (2003) that effectively prevents state action based on any moral considerations.

Today a large segment of society is upset about surveillance conducted within the United States, also under the guise of “privacy”. At the same time, the Federal Marriage Amendment seems to be heading down the same road that the Human Life Amendment has already gone down.

The “right to privacy” as such is not in the text of the Constitution. If it were there, it could be circumscribed appropriately.

So I propose that an amendment along the following lines be added to the Constitution:

To the extent that any unenumerated right may be inferred or imputed from other provisions of this Constitution, such right shall at all times be subordinate to those rights explicitly enumerated herein.