The Ninth Amendment is the one the Supreme Court almost never uses, and constitutional scholar Bill Norton says that is because we have been reading it wrong since the day it was written. In this bonus conversation with Jenny Beth Martin, Norton walks through the amendment scholars now call forgotten. The Ninth Amendment says the enumeration of rights in the Constitution shall not be construed to deny others. Norton's point is easy to miss: the Bill of Rights did not exist yet when those words were written, so "enumerated in the Constitution" cannot mean the ten amendments. It means the entire document. James Madison put it to George Washington: protecting rights and limiting powers are two sides of the same coin. Read it that way and every stretched power becomes a taken right. The hour also covers the natural law principle behind the Second Amendment, why the founders abandoned religious tolerance in favor of freedom of conscience, John Adams on how mixing religion and government corrupts both, the trial of William Penn and the jury that would not convict, jury nullification and the acquittal no judge can overturn, the consent principle buried in the Third Amendment, and what Madison's most misquoted letter says about an Article Five convention. Bill Norton is a constitutional scholar and the author of Behind the Bill of Rights, co-authored with Jeremy Nelson of the National Center for Constitutional Studies. He has studied the founding principles for about thirty five years. More at jennybethshow.com and teapartypatriots.org.
Guest: Bill Norton
Bill Norton is a constitutional scholar and author who has spent roughly thirty five years studying the founding principles and keeps a personal library of about four thousand books. He is the author of Behind the Bill of Rights, co-authored with Jeremy Nelson of the National Center for Constitutional Studies, with Behind the Declaration of Independence and Behind the Constitution of the United States to follow. This is the bonus conversation that closes his four-lesson founding principles training series with Jenny Beth Martin.
Key topics:
Timestamps:
00:14 — Cold open: the last conversation in the founding principles series
00:57 — Behind the Bill of Rights, and the three books
03:14 — What surprised him: the founders barely explained the principles
05:50 — The Second Amendment and the right of self preservation
07:38 — The research: a dozen books, Magna Carta, and Jamestown
10:37 — Freedom of religion, or freedom of conscience
11:23 — The Pilgrims, Holland, and the freedom they did not want
14:53 — Thomas Paine and George Washington on tolerance
19:42 — John Adams: religion and government corrupt each other
21:42 — The paradox of tolerance
24:30 — Superiority, captivity, and cancel culture
29:05 — Jury nullification and how to get out of jury duty
32:09 — The trial of William Penn
41:14 — The Third Amendment and the principle of pre-consent
44:42 — Arizona's governor and the wrong emergency sections
47:45 — Jenny Beth Martin on the fight to reopen the schools
50:52 — The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and on-call judges
52:58 — The Ninth Amendment we have been reading wrong
55:14 — Why the Ninth was originally the Eleventh
58:37 — Enumerated in the Constitution, not the Bill of Rights
59:34 — Madison to Washington: two sides of the same coin
01:02:40 — The amendment the Supreme Court barely cites
01:03:41 — Madison, Patrick Henry, and the Virginia ratification fight
01:06:44 — Jenny Beth Martin on the SAVE America Act, the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, and proof of citizenship to register to vote
01:08:14 — What Madison's letter about a new convention really says
01:13:01 — Two hundred fifty years, and a government you can change
01:14:43 — Closing: you do not have to become a scholar
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