Bill of Rights

The Bill of Rights is the name given to the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. During the debates over the ratification of the Constitution, the antifederalists? criticized the Constitution because it did not mention any rights given to the people. The federalists? countered that the first Confress would add a Bill of Rights to the Constitution.

After the Constitution was ratified, the first Congress was held. Most of the delegates agreed that a Bill of Rights was needed and most of them desired the same rights. The task of drafting the Bill of Rights fell to James Madison. It had been decided earlier that the Bill of Rights would be added to the Constitution as amendments (the list of rights was not included in the Constitution itself because it was feared that changing the document would necessitate the rather painful process of re-ratifying the Constitution).

The Bill of Rights includes rights such as freedom of speech, press, religion, and assembly. It also includes a clause assuring the American people that the bill of rights does not list every right given to Americans, but rather lists the most important rights.

Twelve amendments were originally proposed in 1789, but two failed to pass. The eleventh was ratified in 1992. The twelfth is theoretically still pending, but unlikely to ever pass (it deals with setting the size of Congress, and proposes a formula that wouldn't work for today's population).

The Bill of Rights passed the House easily. When it was sent to the Senate, the senators removed an amendment that forbade states from modifying the rights of the people. Since meetings of the Senate are not public, no one can say for sure why this amendment was removed. The fourteenth amendment, passed in 1868, has been widely interpreted by courts to do exactly that.