Both the Ninth and Tenth Amendments essentially serve as a reminder that any rights not specifically enumerated are reserved to the people and the states, respectively.

Some of the most controversial decisions in Supreme Court history emanate from the Ninth Amendment, including the landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade, and Griswold v. Connecticut, in which the Supreme Court overturned a Connecticut state law that outlawed the use of contraception. The Court reasoned in those decisions and others that the Ninth Amendment included a fundamental right to privacy — “penumbral rights” — that could not be violated. The Supreme Court has used the Ninth Amendment penumbral rights to broadly protect private behavior from government intrusion, although it has done so cautiously and slowly.

The Tenth Amendment declares that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”