Hearing the People, Part 1
This lecture introduces America's 'lived Constitution', where rights emerge from custom and practice, particularly under the Ninth Amendment. It shows how courts recognize unenumerated rights by 'counting' evolving state practices, from the right to testify to privacy cases like Griswold and Lawrence v. Texas.
Nothing in the text guarantees your right to testify in your own defense, and at the founding no court allowed it. Akhil Reed Amar explains how it became a basic right.
This lecture opens the chapter on America's lived Constitution: rights the people establish through custom and daily practice. Amar reads the Ninth Amendment's promise of unenumerated rights and shows how courts "count" evolving state practice to recognize them, from the right to testify and proof beyond reasonable doubt to the privacy line running through Griswold, Eisenstadt, and Lawrence v. Texas. He also explains why Roe v. Wade, out ahead of state practice, proved so contested.