The Bill of Rights Essay

The Articles of Confederation, Adopted by Congress on November 15, 1777, for all practical purposes was the United States’ first Constitution. Created to establish a bond between the newly formed states, “...the Articles purposely established a "constitution" that vested the largest share of power to the individual states” (Early America). This ensured that the government did not have the majority of power. “...the Articles denied Congress the power to collect taxes, regulate interstate commerce and enforce laws...allowing the states retained their "sovereignty, freedom and independence” (Early

When the United States declared itself a sovereign nation, the Articles of Confederation were drafted to serve as the nations first Constitution.Under these Articles, the states held most of the power; but due to an almost absent centralized government, colonists were ill-equipped to deal with such practices as regulating trade both between states and internationally, levying taxes, solving inter-state disputes, negotiating with foreign nations, and most importantly enforcing laws under the current notion of "Congress". Realizing that there were several deficiencies in the current system of self-government, the states appointed delegates to ratify the situation and come up with a way to attain the aforementioned practices they needed to

The Articles of Confederation was the United State’s first constitution, it was written in an effort to unite the states after the American Revolution and served as a blueprint for the modern constitution. In order for the Articles to become official, they had to be approved by all thirteen colonies. Although Congress sent the Articles of Confederation to the states around the end of 1777 to become ratified, they were not officially adopted until March 1, 1781. Under these Articles, the states remained sovereign and independent, with Congress serving as the last resort on appeal of disputes. The American people feared a strong national government and as a result of this, the Articles of Confederation were specifically designed to be weak in the sense that each state maintains its own sovereignty and all rights to govern themselves, with the except of the rights exclusively granted to Congress. Since the Articles lacked many necessary components to keep a nation properly structured, they were eventually revised into the constitution we recognize today. Although, the Articles of Confederation seemed as though it only contained weaknesses, within the document, many strengths and accomplishments were made. Overall, the Articles of Confederation were proven to be both efficient and non-efficient during the time period they were in effect.

In 1776, when the United States declared independence from Britain, the new country needed a set of laws to apply to all of the states to replace the earlier British rule. The colonists, however, were concerned that if the United States put too much power in the central government the states rights would vanish. Therefore, the first form of government, the Articles of Confederation, gave too much power to the states and insufficient power to the central government. States could create their own money and refuse federal taxes, which caused many tribulations and almost destroyed the new country. In 1787, delegates from twelve states came together to revise the Articles

In 1787, a new form of government was created. A radical move from the articles of confederation began. When the articles of confederation moved to the U.S. Constitution it was not taken very well. Even though, the articles of confederation weakened the U.S. The articles were adopted on 1777 and were the combination of 13 states that includes New Hampshire, Massachusetts-bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.

The concept of selective incorporation has played a huge role over the debate of the powers of a state or local government against the federal government. According to Tom Streissguth, "... it refers to how the rights outlined in the Constitution apply to the states -- and the requirement that state laws and constitutions must observe these rights" in his article "The Definition of Selective Incorporation" (Streissguth). After the Civil War, the idea of selective incorporation came with the passing of the Fourteenth Amendment. The legislature laid down significant new rights for the citizens of the United States; these rights included due process and equal protection. This amendment also touched upon and strengthened the first ten amendments to the Constitution known as the Bill of Rights.

The U.S Constitution and the Bill of Rights are iconic pieces of American History. These two documents are very important for every American to know and to read critically because it can highly affect them. However, there are many people in the country that do not know what is exactly in these documents. I have read through these pieces, and I will be discussing what I found to be most surprising to find in the piece. Also, the items that I expected to find in the documents that is not there.

“...No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection on the laws (US Const. amend. XIV, sec. 1)”. Selective incorporation is a constitutional doctrine that guarantees that states cannot enforce laws that deprive American citizens of their constitutional rights given in the Bill of Rights. The Fourteenth Amendment passed in 1868, still upholds a controversial role. Although the initial intention of the Fourteenth Amendment was to implement equality for newly freed slaves, its power expanded to justifying the application of federal rights granted by the Bill of Rights to state governments. On a case by case basis, the Supreme Court decides on which aspects of the Bill of Rights it will apply to the states. The idea of selective incorporation has influenced American federalism tremendously due to multiple variances in opposing and supporting outlooks. Numerous cases of violated rights will be the topic of discussion, and how selective incorporation has brought justice among them all. Demonstrated in this paper will be how Selective Incorporation has made a significant difference in America, and reflect on how it came about.

From the time it was first proposed in 1789, the Bill of Rights was controversial. The founding fathers had already considered adding a Bill of Rights in the original 1787 Constitution, mainly because they knew the people feared a powerful central government and formally stating their rights in this new document would appease them. They did not add it, however, thinking it was not really necessary. Each state had their own version of a Bill of Rights anyway. The framers of the Constitution decided that just because rights were not enumerated for the individual states in the Constitution did not mean that the federal government controlled the lives of every citizen. The debate over the Bill of Rights came down to the Federalists

Within The Constitution lies the Bill of Rights. This document, as its name would suggest, gives U.S. citizens certain unalienable rights. One of these rights is the right to freedom of speech. This means that people have the right to speak their mind and nobody can tell them otherwise. But of course, with its ever increasing population, the United States is bound to birth a few blithering fools who take this right to the extreme. Fred Phelps is one of these such people. This man openly shames gays and soldiers, and at their funerals nonetheless. His reasoning goes something like this: “America supports gays, gays are bad, soldiers who fight for America, and therefore for gays, are bad.” This may be grossly simplified, but this is more or less

What is the Bill of Rights? The Bill of Rights is how we primarily know and call the first ten amendments of the constitution. They were mainly written by James Madison, a Virginian man and antifederalist who later became president of the United States. They are the core rights and privileges, that we, Americans possess and sometimes take for granted.

Over many years there is a debate that remains unresolved, the debate in which individuals argue whether the Charters or bills of rights are necessary for a strong and healthy democracy. I would agree with those that advocate for the Charter and how it plays a huge role in the creation and existence of democracy. The main reasons the Charter is vital is as follows; the Charter has enforced laws against discrimination, which thus creates equal rights and opportunities. Furthermore, the Charter makes sure that those with power do not take advantage of it and use it for self-interest, as now any wrong doings can have consequences as there is a written legislation that states an individuals rights and freedoms and no one individual can say they did not know the law as it can be easily found. Next, the Charter guarantees that the law will be fair and impartial unless proven otherwise. The Charter of rights and freedoms is a significant part of the Canadian history as it has shaped Canada to be

Most people today believe that the Bill of Rights is a protection against federal and states encroachment and would be surprised to know that modern applications of Bill of Rights differ largely from the original concepts adopted in the Constitution. Framers, fearful of large centralized government, wrote the Bill of Rights as protection against federal government and not state government. The adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, however, blurred the lines of the Bill of Rights and the states. Through a narrow interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges and Immunity clause, slaughterhouses cases determined that individuals were not protected for state infringement and displaced the protection of individuals rights from Privileges and Immunities clause to the Due Process Clause of the Constitution (Rossum and Tarr, 52). Further, the opinion of Barron v Baltimore(1833) established that if they wanted to limit state government, “they would have declared this purpose in plain and intelligible language...these amendments demanded security against the apprehended encroachment of the general government--not against those of the local government.” As a result of these two precedents, two main approaches emerged and profoundly shaped modern interpretation of the Bill of Rights: fundamental rights incorporation and total incorporation.

The three primary dissenters to the human rights tradition as put forth by the likes of John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Paine and Immanuel Kant all based their criticisms of the tradition in some way on questioning the foundations of the claims for human rights. All of the three – Edmund Burke, Jeremy Bentham and Karl Marx – land on a conclusion that the human rights tradition has too heavy a dependence upon individuals, whether through an overdependence on their ability to reason in the case of Burke or through an overdependence on protecting and benefitting individuals in the cases of Bentham and Marx.

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