r, the Fourth Amendment is challenged by the wording of the First Amendment, which gives to all Americans freedom of speech and freedom of the press. It can be seen that the privacy of an individual could easily be abused by the right of the press to say whatever it wants to. Thus, over the years, the American courts have sought to limit such abuses by interpreting the Bill of Rights in ways which protect individual citizens from such things as libel and slander in the press.
The ability of the American legal system to interpret the amendments in this way was granted in part by the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution, which states: "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people" (Goode 19). In the late 1780s, before the Constitution was ratified, many members of the First Congress demanded a Bill of Rights in order to limit the powers of the federal government and thus insure the rights of the states and individuals. James Madison, one of the chief writers of the Constitution, was at first opposed to the idea of the Bill of Rights. Madison later came to be a proponent of the Bill of Rights; however, he insisted upon including the Ninth Amendment because he felt that the new laws might otherwise be too restrictive for the future growth of the nation. The Ninth Amendment points out that there are other inalienable rights for American citizens which are not listed in the Constitution, and "since none of these 'additional rights' were named, it was left for later Americans to discover what they were and undertake proper protection of them" (Goode 19). The Ninth Amendment thus allows for future modifications or interpretations of all the other amendments.
Another amendment which has permitted a broad interpretation of Constitutional l
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