An excerpt of Justice Goldberg's concurrence with the majority opinion from Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), 381 U.S. 479 (1965)

This Court, in a series of decisions, has held that the Fourteenth Amendment absorbs and applies to the States those specifics of the first eight amendments which express fundamental personal rights. [Footnote 2] The language and history of the Ninth Amendment reveal that the Framers of the Constitution believed that there are additional fundamental rights, protected from governmental infringement, which exist alongside those fundamental rights specifically mentioned in the first eight constitutional amendments. The Ninth Amendment reads, "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." The Amendment is almost entirely the work of James Madison. It was introduced in Congress by him, and passed the House and Senate with little or no debate and virtually no change in language. It was proffered to quiet expressed fears that a bill of specifically enumerated rights [Footnote 3] could not be sufficiently broad to cover all essential rights, and that the specific mention of certain rights would be interpreted as a denial that others were protected. [Footnote 4]

In presenting the proposed Amendment, Madison said:

   "It has been objected also against a bill of rights that, by
    enumerating particular exceptions to the grant of power, it would
    disparage those rights which were not placed in that enumeration, and
    it might follow, by implication, that those rights which were not
    singled out were intended to be assigned into the hands of the General
    Government, and were consequently insecure. This is one of the most
    plausible arguments I have ever heard urged against the admission of a
    bill of rights into this system, but I conceive that it may be guarded
    against. I have attempted it, as gentlemen may see by turning to the
    last clause of the fourth resolution [the Ninth Amendment]."

    I Annals of Congress 439 (Gales and Seaton ed. 1834).

Mr. Justice Story wrote of this argument against a bill of rights and the meaning of the Ninth Amendment:

  "In regard to . . . [a] suggestion, that the affirmance of certain
   rights might disparage others, or might lead to argumentative
   implications in favor of other powers, it might be sufficient to say
   that such a course of reasoning could never be sustained upon any
   solid basis. . . . But a conclusive answer is that such an attempt
   may be interdicted (as it has been) by a positive declaration in
   such a bill of rights that the enumeration of certain rights shall
   not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the
   people."

   II Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States 626-627 (5th ed. 1891).

He further stated, referring to the Ninth Amendment:

  "This clause was manifestly introduced to prevent any perverse or
   ingenious misapplication of the well known maxim that an
   affirmation in particular cases implies a negation in all others,
   and, e converso, that a negation in particular cases implies an
   affirmation in all others."

   Id. at 651.

These statements of Madison and Story make clear that the Framers did not intend that the first eight amendments be construed to exhaust the basic and fundamental rights which the Constitution guaranteed to the people. [Footnote 5]

While this Court has had little occasion to interpret the Ninth Amendment, [Footnote 6] "[i]t cannot be presumed that any clause in the constitution is intended to be without effect." Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 5 U. S. 174. In interpreting the Constitution, "real effect should be given to all the words it uses." Myers v. United States, 272 U. S. 52, 272 U. S. 151. The Ninth Amendment to the Constitution may be regarded by some as a recent discovery, and may be forgotten by others, but, since 1791, it has been a basic part of the Constitution which we are sworn to uphold. To hold that a right so basic and fundamental and so deep-rooted in our society as the right of privacy in marriage may be infringed because that right is not guaranteed in so many words by the first eight amendments to the Constitution is to ignore the Ninth Amendment, and to give it no effect whatsoever. Moreover, a judicial construction that this fundamental right is not protected by the Constitution because it is not mentioned in explicit terms by one of the first eight amendments or elsewhere in the Constitution would violate the Ninth Amendment, which specifically states that

   "[t]he enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be
    construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

    (Emphasis added.)