Top Highlights

• First was the Necessary and Proper Clause in McCullochv . Maryland (1819), then the Commerce Clause (a bit) in Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), then the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in The Slaughter-House Cases (1873), then the Commerce Clause (this time in earnest) in Wickard v.Filburn (1942), and the Ninth Amendment in Unit...
• According to the Supreme Court, a majority in Congress could restrict the liberties of the people pretty much any way it wished unless a law violated an express prohibition of the Constitution—or some privileged but unenumerated right such as the right of privacy.
• Were this not enough, the most famous decision in which the Supreme Court had once tried holding the line, Lochner v. New York (1905), was taught along with other cases from the Progressive Era precisely as examples of how courts were not supposed to act.
• The idea of protecting liberty by imposing written constraints on the government was an experiment that obviously had failed.
• the Ninth Amendment: “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the People.”