You can start with:

a) his new book – The Lost History of the Ninth Amendment
b) his seminal research publication – “The Inescapable Federalism of the Ninth Amendment,” 93 Iowa Law Review 801(2008)

First, in reply to Micahel's challenge to Jerome that Jerome 'back up' his statement, I note that Prof. Natelson offers no support for his conclusion that:

"The Ninth Amendment was not designed to enable the Courts to create new rights – or even to recognize old ones. It was designed to work with the Tenth Amendment to preserve the Constitution’s other restrictions on federal power."

other than a vague reference to his opinion that the word 'power' can and "sometimes" should be substituted for 'rights' and vice versa.

Prof. Natelson doesn't tell us exactly WHEN we should substitute these words for each other except, apparently, we should do so when it allows us to agree with his conclusion and we should not do so when it leads us to disagree with him.

I'm a federal lawyers and student of the Constitution for 30 years so I feel it's appropriate to point out, yet again, that we are not free to simply change the carefully chosen words of the Constitution when we don't like the result obtained by adhering to the original language therein.

In this case, there is no compelling reason to conclude that the Founders and Ratifiers meant anything other than what they wrote and approved in the 9th amendment. If one reads it carefully, it simply says that the people's "rights" listed in the first 8 amendments aren't a complete list. Obviously, this means the people thought they had other rights as well. Exactly what those 'other rights of the people' might be is left open since it's not possible to draft a complete list.

Further, in the 10th amendment, the drafters used the word "powers" delegated to government. This is understandable since people have rights and governments have powers. It would have been awkward to refer to 'delegated rights' since governments are not living beings and thus have no rights.

Moreover, the 'powers' not delegated to the United State were 'preserved' by the States and the people. Again, States do not exist in the real world so it would have been awkward to refer to 'rights' being preserved to the States.

Please notice that the Bill of Rights all consist of only one sentence. This was obviously an intentional drafting technique but it causes some slightly awkward moments (which often are revealed by the use of a semi colon).

Given the fact that the 10th amendment refers to three different entities (US Government, States and the people) in one sentence, and that 2 of the entities are not real, it's hard to come up with a good way to distinguish between rights and powers in a grammatically concise, correct and consistent way. Hence, the slightly awkward language.

Despite this minor awkwardness, it's clear from reading the entire document carefully that the drafters were concerned that including a list of people's rights might someday be used to limit those rights to only those on the list. So, just to be clear as a bell, the drafters added the 9th amendment.

The 9th amendment's focus is on the people and it clarifies that the people's rights are not limited to those in the list.

The 10th amendment's focus is on the federal government and makes it clear that the federal government has no power that is not listed in the Constitution. This is perfectly clear and perfectly reasonable and shows extremely careful and artful drafting. If only people were as clever and careful today!

If you adopt Prof. Natelson's view that the 9th amendment is only a limitation on the federal government's powers, the 9th amendment is surplussage because the 10th amendment already says that the federal government is limited to the powers listed in the Constitution.

A basic rule of logic and legal construction is that documents should not be construed to render parts meaningless if a different construction gives meaning to all parts of the document.

Thus, it follows that Prof. Natelson's conclusion is wrong. Jerome is right.

Again, the 9th amendment protects people's rights from being limited to those listed in the first 8 amendments.

Finally, courts do not 'create new rights' as Prof. Natelson seems to claim. They do, however, recognize 'old' ones when they issue rulings that protect the core concepts of 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' from being usurped by governments.

One of the challenges for the court system is to understand that Griswold v. Connecticut got it right; there is a "penumbra" of rights and they are not listed in any one resource. The courts must strive to recognize what the rights of the people truly are and what actions by governments intrude upon those rights.

It's not perfect but you have no hope if you don't understand the basic concept of freedom.

The Professor provides some significant analysis in this short piece – do you have anything other than your opinion to back up your statement?

But, in practice, when the federal government creates new laws or regulations that violate your liberty it’s far worse than when a single state does it.

Why? because there’s no escape.

And that’s part of what the founding generation gave us with this idea of a federal republic.

They are really the same thing except one(rights) is implied to exist legitimately regardless the usurpation of others.

In regards to your comment above, It is my belief that only people have rights, and governments have power…am I wrong?

States and governments do no have rights. Only people have rights.

Governments only have powers – and they only have those powers that people delegate to them – nothing more.

Well, that’s the way it’s supposed to be!

The break down in the understanding of the language of the Constitution i feel has helped fuel the break down in that document.