But the central principle at work is the Fifth Amendment clause saying that if the government takes a person's property, it must pay "just compensation".
But to rule that a "public use" is anything the legislature says it is (which, in substance, is the Supreme Court's ruling in the New London case), in effect writes the Fifth Amendment clause permitting government takings only for a "public use" out of the Constitution.
The group, joined by the Washington Legal Foundation, argued that forcing patients to wait years for a drug to go through the process of clinical trials deprived dying patients of their right to self-defense and violated the Fifth Amendment clause stating that people cannot be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.
Both of the amendments contain clauses stating, "Congress shall have power to enforce" the amendments by "appropriate legislation".
He said the law violates both the First Amendment's clause ensuring religious rights and the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause designed to ensure liberty.
Indeed, it would violate the First Amendment's clause protecting the free exercise of religion.
The federal courts have long held that such a message violates the First Amendment's clause prohibiting the establishment of a state religion, she said.
He can do this, many legal scholars have argued, by citing the 14th Amendment's clause that the country's public debt shall not be questioned, a route that Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats are now urging him to take.
Seven years earlier, in Van Orden v Perry, the United States Supreme Court ruled that a Ten Commandments monument placed on the Texas state capitol grounds did not violate the First Amendment's clause forbidding government from making any law "respecting the establishment of religion".
On the contrary, in 1997 the government rejected an opposition amendment to clause 2 of the human rights bill which would have bound UK judges to follow the jurisprudence of the Strasbourg courts.
