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A Bill of Rights is What Every Free People Are Entitled To Against Every Government
"Let me add that a bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference......" - Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to James Madison, December 20, 1787
December 15 marks a very special day in our founding history - On that date in 1791, the first 14 states (Vermont had just been admitted to the Union as the 14th state), ratified the first 10 amendments to the US Constitution, known collectively as our Bill of Rights. We often take it for granted that these first ten amendments, our Bill of Rights, are included in our Constitution, but if we want to point to one reason the colonies went to war for their independence from Great Britain, it was to permanently secure the rights embodied in our Bill of Rights from all reaches of government. Without the Bill of Rights, the revolution would have been in vein. Thomas Jefferson, probably the Founder who exerted the most pressure on James Madison for a Bill of Rights, advised: "A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse." He wrote this to Madison on December 20, 1787, almost three months after the Constitution had been signed by its drafters in Philadelphia.
On Bill of Rights Day, we reflect upon those rights guaranteed in the first nine amendments (the tenth being a restatement of federalism - the strict separation of power between the federal government and the States) but more importantly, we should come to appreciate the efforts of certain particularly liberty-minded Founders who fought against great odds to make sure that our Constitution in fact included a Bill of Rights. After all, James Madison, considered the Constitution's author, and most of the other Federalists did not see the need for a Bill of Rights and thought the Constitution wholly sufficient without it. That was the status of the Constitution when it went to the states for ratification.
What is a "Bill of Rights"? A bill of rights, sometimes called a Declaration of Rights or a Charter of Rights, is a list of the most important rights belonging to the citizens of a country - rights that the King or other form of government must respect. The purpose is to protect those rights against infringement either by law or by conduct from public officials. The US Bill of Rights is the Declaration and enumeration is the individual rights memorialized in the Constitution intended to protect the individual against violations and abuses of power by the government. In that respect, our Bill of Rights is like most other bill of rights (including the English Bill of Rights is 1689 and the great Magna Carta of 1215). This history of England, including the movement of groups of people (like the Puritans and Pilgrims), to the New World, is a history continually seeking for the recognition and security of fundamental human liberties. And early colonial history continued that tradition of setting out the rights and privileges of the individual in their government charters.
The Preamble to the Bill of Rights explains its clear purpose. It reads: "The Conventions of a number of the States having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best insure the beneficent ends of its institution."
In other words, the Bill of Rights is a further limitation on the power of government, above and beyond those limitations already imposed by its very design and delegation of limited powers.
HISTORY:
Again, a Bill of Rights (or Declaration of Rights, or Charter of Rights), is a list of the most important rights belonging to the citizens of a country that the King or other form of government must respect. Bills of rights may be "entrenched" or "unentrenched." A bill of rights that is "entrenched" cannot be amended or repealed by the governing legislature through regular procedure, but rather, it would require a supermajority or referendum. Bills of rights that are "entrenched" are often those which are part of a country's constitution, and therefore subject to special procedures applicable to constitutional amendments. A bill of rights that is not entrenched ("unentrenched") is merely statutory in form and as such can be modified or repealed by the legislature at will.
The history of the world shows that there have been limited instances where the rights of the people have been enumerated and/or protected by a Bill of Rights. This history includes the following charters, documents, or bills of right:
Magna Carta (1215; England) rights for barons
Great Charter of Ireland (1216; Ireland) rights for barons - Ireland became independent of Great Britain in 1937
Golden Bull of 1222 (1222; Hungary) rights for nobles - which interestingly, included the right of Nullification
Charter of Kortenberg (1312; Belgium) rights for all citizens "rich and poor"
Twelve Articles (1525; Germany) - considered the first draft of human rights and civil liberties in continental Europe after the Roman Empire.
Petition of Right (1628; England)
English Bill of Rights 1689
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789; France) - inspired by Thomas Jefferson
The US Bill of Rights (1791)
The roots of our modern-day liberty originated in England, as far back as 1100, culminating there with the English Bill of Rights in 1689 and ultimately providing the blueprint for our very own US Bill of Rights in 1791. The roots of liberty, including the roots of our very own American liberty rights, can be found in the selection of charters and documents listed below:
The 1100 Charter of Liberties (also called the Coronation Charter) - The 1100 Charter of Liberties was a written proclamation offered by Henry I of England and issued upon his accession to the throne in 1100. It sought to bind the King to certain laws regarding the treatment of nobles, church officials, and individuals - most notably, certain marriage rights, rights of inheritance, amnesty rights, rights for the criminally-accused, and environmental protection (forests). It is considered to be the precursor to the Magna Carta.
The Magna Carta of 1215 ("the Great Charter") - The barons at the time, frustrated by ten years of excessive taxation by King John in order to finance a campaign to regain lands in France only to watch the King return home in defeat, consolidated their power and threatened to renounce him. Over the next eight months, they made repeated demands to the King, requesting that he give them a guarantee that he would observe their rights. But these negotiations amounted to nothing. And so, on May 5, 1215, the barons gathered and agreed to declare war on him. On May 17, the barons captured London, the largest town in England, without a fight, and finally, King John took notice. With London lost and ever more supporters flocking to the side of the barons, he sent word that he would meet with them to discuss terms of peace.. Over the next few days, the barons assembled in great numbers on the fields of Runnymede, a relatively obscure meadow that lies between the town of Staines and Windsor castle, where King John was based. Negotiations took place over the next several days and finally, on June 15, King John affixed his seal to the document that would become known as the Magna Carta (or "The Great Charter"). The Magna Carta enumerated an expansive list (63 "chapters") of rights for barons, and also provided the remedy of Nullification. The principles extended beyond the often-recognized origin of the "No Taxation Without Representation" doctrine in chapter 12 (and hence the creation of a "people's body" which addressed matters of taxation and spending) and the Due Process clause of chapter 39. The concepts of "Trial by Jury" and "No Cruel Punishments" are present in chapter 21; and the forerunner of the "Confrontation Clause" of our 6th Amendment addressed in chapters 38, 40, and 44. But the most important contribution of the Magna Carta is the claim that there is a fundamental set of principles which even the King must respect. Above all else, Magna Carta makes the case that the people have a "right" to expect boundaries from the King in their lives and with respect to their property. They have a right to expect "reasonable" conduct. [King John would go on to ignore the promises he made in signing the Magna Carta]
The Petition of Right of 1628 - In 1628, under the leadership of Sir Edward Coke, a legal scholar-turned-practical politician, Parliament petitioned Charles I, son of the recently deceased King James I, to uphold the traditional rights of Englishmen, as set forth in the Magna Carta. It was an appeal to his sense of being a just King. Charles was already on his way to being a notorious tyrant. Parliament was not only fed up with is participation in the Thirty Years War (a highly destructive European war) against its consent, but when it refused to provide Charles the revenue to fight the war, he dissolved the body (several times, actually). That would lead Charles to raise revenue other ways - by gathering "forced loans" and "ship money" without Parliamentary approval (hence, taxation without representation in violation of the Magna Carta) and arbitrarily imprisoning those who refused to pay. Among the customary "diverse rights and liberties of the subjects" listed in the Petition of Right were no taxation without consent (as mentioned), "due process of law," the right to habeas corpus, no quartering of troops, the respect for private property, and the imposition of no cruel punishment. King Charles did not consider himself bound by the Petition and so, he simply disregarded it. He would later be officially tried for high treason by a rump Parliament and beheaded in 1649. [The Petition of Right would have a profound effect on our US Bill of Rights: The Due Process clause of the 5th Amendment, the "Criminal Trials" clause of the 6th Amendment, and the "Civil Jury Trial" clause of the 7th Amendment all are influenced by the Petition of Right. Furthermore, during the 1760s, the American colonists articulated their grievances against King George in terms similar to those used by Lord Coke in the Petition of Right to uphold the rights of Englishmen].
The English Bill of Rights of 1689 - After the Bloodless Revolution or "Glorious Revolution" (in which the English Parliament instigated a bloodless coup, replacing King James II with his daughter, Mary II and her husband, William III), Parliament set to right the abuses of its previous kings - Charles I, Charles II, and James II. It drafted and adopted a bill of rights, known as the English Bill of Rights, as which set out certain basic civil rights and clarified the right of secession for the British Crown. It was presented to William and Mary in February 1689 as a condition to the offer to become joint ruling sovereigns of England. It was contractual in nature so that the acceptance of the throne was tied to their express promise to recognize the rights set forth in the Bill of Rights. A violation of that agreement would terminate the right of William and Mary to rule. The Bill of Rights lays down limits on the powers of the monarch and sets out the rights of Parliament. It further, and most importantly for this discussion, sets out certain rights of the individual, including: the right to bear arms for self-defense, the right of Due Process, the right to petition government, such criminal defense rights as the right to be free from excessive bail, the right to a jury trial for the crime of high treason, and the right against any cruel and/or unusual punishment, the guarantee that there would be no taxation without representation, the right to be free of a standing army in times of peace, and the right to be free of any quartering of troops. [Great Britain is unlike the United States in that it has no formal Constitution; rather, the English Bill of Rights, taken together with the Magna Carta, the Petition of Right, the Habeas Corpus Act 1679 and the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949 are considered, in total, as the uncodified British constitution].
The colonies being organized under grants and agreements from England, it was assumed that English traditions applied. The colonists considered themselves British subjects and as such, they believed they were entitled to all the rights and privileges of Englishmen. That is why they reacted as they did to the taxes imposed by Parliament, why one protest theme was "No Taxation Without Representation," why the Sons of Liberty formed, why they harassed the colonial stamp collectors and stamp masters until they resigned, why they engaged in acts of civil disobedience (such as preventing the British from unloading their ships at colonial ports) or hanging colonial governors in effigy, why they tossed crates of tea into the Boston Harbor, why men like Patrick Henry called for the raising and training of colonial militias, and why they were willing to confront the Redcoats with their muskets when they sought to destroy the stockpiles of colonial ammunition. It seemed that once again, as English history has shown true, Englishmen would have to exert their rights and demand that the King to respect them. Proper boundaries would once again have to be established.
King John's rejection of the Magna Carta (1215) and King Charles's rejection of the Petition of Right (1628) proved to our Founding Fathers that the system established in Great Britain provided only arbitrary security for individual rights. They would need to come up with a different system of government, grounded on more "enlightened" principles and "enlightened" government philosophy. And that is exactly what they did in the Declaration of Independence - announcing that the American states were united on the concept of Individual Sovereignty, that government power originated from the People, to serve the People, and not from kings ("the Divine Right of Kings") to serve kings.
With what many believe to be divine guidance and protection, the thirteen original colonies fought and won their independence from Great Britain in 1781. Lord Cornwallis surrendered his British troops to General George Washington, Commander of the Continental Army, on October 19, 1781 and the Treaty of Paris, signed in September 1783, marked the official end of the struggle. Since the colonies worked together in a collaborative effort to communicate grievances and concerns to King George and Parliament and to engage in a concerted effort to prevent war, but then once war came, to fight and manage the war effort, it seemed only natural to continue to collaborate in their independence. The first attempt at a loose union of states, under the Articles of Confederation, was not very successful. The government lacked the enforcement power needed to effectively act on behalf of the states, such as the power to collect revenue to pay the war debt.
Go Back
December 15 marks a very special day in our founding history - On that date in 1791, the first 14 states (Vermont had just been admitted to the Union as the 14th state), ratified the first 10 amendments to the US Constitution, known collectively as our Bill of Rights. We often take it for granted that these first ten amendments, our Bill of Rights, are included in our Constitution, but if we want to point to one reason the colonies went to war for their independence from Great Britain, it was to permanently secure the rights embodied in our Bill of Rights from all reaches of government. Without the Bill of Rights, the revolution would have been in vein. Thomas Jefferson, probably the Founder who exerted the most pressure on James Madison for a Bill of Rights, advised: "A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse." He wrote this to Madison on December 20, 1787, almost three months after the Constitution had been signed by its drafters in Philadelphia.
On Bill of Rights Day, we reflect upon those rights guaranteed in the first nine amendments (the tenth being a restatement of federalism - the strict separation of power between the federal government and the States) but more importantly, we should come to appreciate the efforts of certain particularly liberty-minded Founders who fought against great odds to make sure that our Constitution in fact included a Bill of Rights. After all, James Madison, considered the Constitution's author, and most of the other Federalists did not see the need for a Bill of Rights and thought the Constitution wholly sufficient without it. That was the status of the Constitution when it went to the states for ratification.
What is a "Bill of Rights"? A bill of rights, sometimes called a Declaration of Rights or a Charter of Rights, is a list of the most important rights belonging to the citizens of a country - rights that the King or other form of government must respect. The purpose is to protect those rights against infringement either by law or by conduct from public officials. The US Bill of Rights is the Declaration and enumeration is the individual rights memorialized in the Constitution intended to protect the individual against violations and abuses of power by the government. In that respect, our Bill of Rights is like most other bill of rights (including the English Bill of Rights is 1689 and the great Magna Carta of 1215). This history of England, including the movement of groups of people (like the Puritans and Pilgrims), to the New World, is a history continually seeking for the recognition and security of fundamental human liberties. And early colonial history continued that tradition of setting out the rights and privileges of the individual in their government charters.
The Preamble to the Bill of Rights explains its clear purpose. It reads: "The Conventions of a number of the States having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best insure the beneficent ends of its institution."
In other words, the Bill of Rights is a further limitation on the power of government, above and beyond those limitations already imposed by its very design and delegation of limited powers.
HISTORY:
Again, a Bill of Rights (or Declaration of Rights, or Charter of Rights), is a list of the most important rights belonging to the citizens of a country that the King or other form of government must respect. Bills of rights may be "entrenched" or "unentrenched." A bill of rights that is "entrenched" cannot be amended or repealed by the governing legislature through regular procedure, but rather, it would require a supermajority or referendum. Bills of rights that are "entrenched" are often those which are part of a country's constitution, and therefore subject to special procedures applicable to constitutional amendments. A bill of rights that is not entrenched ("unentrenched") is merely statutory in form and as such can be modified or repealed by the legislature at will.
The history of the world shows that there have been limited instances where the rights of the people have been enumerated and/or protected by a Bill of Rights. This history includes the following charters, documents, or bills of right:
Magna Carta (1215; England) rights for barons
Great Charter of Ireland (1216; Ireland) rights for barons - Ireland became independent of Great Britain in 1937
Golden Bull of 1222 (1222; Hungary) rights for nobles - which interestingly, included the right of Nullification
Charter of Kortenberg (1312; Belgium) rights for all citizens "rich and poor"
Twelve Articles (1525; Germany) - considered the first draft of human rights and civil liberties in continental Europe after the Roman Empire.
Petition of Right (1628; England)
English Bill of Rights 1689
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789; France) - inspired by Thomas Jefferson
The US Bill of Rights (1791)
The roots of our modern-day liberty originated in England, as far back as 1100, culminating there with the English Bill of Rights in 1689 and ultimately providing the blueprint for our very own US Bill of Rights in 1791. The roots of liberty, including the roots of our very own American liberty rights, can be found in the selection of charters and documents listed below:
The 1100 Charter of Liberties (also called the Coronation Charter) - The 1100 Charter of Liberties was a written proclamation offered by Henry I of England and issued upon his accession to the throne in 1100. It sought to bind the King to certain laws regarding the treatment of nobles, church officials, and individuals - most notably, certain marriage rights, rights of inheritance, amnesty rights, rights for the criminally-accused, and environmental protection (forests). It is considered to be the precursor to the Magna Carta.
The Magna Carta of 1215 ("the Great Charter") - The barons at the time, frustrated by ten years of excessive taxation by King John in order to finance a campaign to regain lands in France only to watch the King return home in defeat, consolidated their power and threatened to renounce him. Over the next eight months, they made repeated demands to the King, requesting that he give them a guarantee that he would observe their rights. But these negotiations amounted to nothing. And so, on May 5, 1215, the barons gathered and agreed to declare war on him. On May 17, the barons captured London, the largest town in England, without a fight, and finally, King John took notice. With London lost and ever more supporters flocking to the side of the barons, he sent word that he would meet with them to discuss terms of peace.. Over the next few days, the barons assembled in great numbers on the fields of Runnymede, a relatively obscure meadow that lies between the town of Staines and Windsor castle, where King John was based. Negotiations took place over the next several days and finally, on June 15, King John affixed his seal to the document that would become known as the Magna Carta (or "The Great Charter"). The Magna Carta enumerated an expansive list (63 "chapters") of rights for barons, and also provided the remedy of Nullification. The principles extended beyond the often-recognized origin of the "No Taxation Without Representation" doctrine in chapter 12 (and hence the creation of a "people's body" which addressed matters of taxation and spending) and the Due Process clause of chapter 39. The concepts of "Trial by Jury" and "No Cruel Punishments" are present in chapter 21; and the forerunner of the "Confrontation Clause" of our 6th Amendment addressed in chapters 38, 40, and 44. But the most important contribution of the Magna Carta is the claim that there is a fundamental set of principles which even the King must respect. Above all else, Magna Carta makes the case that the people have a "right" to expect boundaries from the King in their lives and with respect to their property. They have a right to expect "reasonable" conduct. [King John would go on to ignore the promises he made in signing the Magna Carta]
The Petition of Right of 1628 - In 1628, under the leadership of Sir Edward Coke, a legal scholar-turned-practical politician, Parliament petitioned Charles I, son of the recently deceased King James I, to uphold the traditional rights of Englishmen, as set forth in the Magna Carta. It was an appeal to his sense of being a just King. Charles was already on his way to being a notorious tyrant. Parliament was not only fed up with is participation in the Thirty Years War (a highly destructive European war) against its consent, but when it refused to provide Charles the revenue to fight the war, he dissolved the body (several times, actually). That would lead Charles to raise revenue other ways - by gathering "forced loans" and "ship money" without Parliamentary approval (hence, taxation without representation in violation of the Magna Carta) and arbitrarily imprisoning those who refused to pay. Among the customary "diverse rights and liberties of the subjects" listed in the Petition of Right were no taxation without consent (as mentioned), "due process of law," the right to habeas corpus, no quartering of troops, the respect for private property, and the imposition of no cruel punishment. King Charles did not consider himself bound by the Petition and so, he simply disregarded it. He would later be officially tried for high treason by a rump Parliament and beheaded in 1649. [The Petition of Right would have a profound effect on our US Bill of Rights: The Due Process clause of the 5th Amendment, the "Criminal Trials" clause of the 6th Amendment, and the "Civil Jury Trial" clause of the 7th Amendment all are influenced by the Petition of Right. Furthermore, during the 1760s, the American colonists articulated their grievances against King George in terms similar to those used by Lord Coke in the Petition of Right to uphold the rights of Englishmen].
The English Bill of Rights of 1689 - After the Bloodless Revolution or "Glorious Revolution" (in which the English Parliament instigated a bloodless coup, replacing King James II with his daughter, Mary II and her husband, William III), Parliament set to right the abuses of its previous kings - Charles I, Charles II, and James II. It drafted and adopted a bill of rights, known as the English Bill of Rights, as which set out certain basic civil rights and clarified the right of secession for the British Crown. It was presented to William and Mary in February 1689 as a condition to the offer to become joint ruling sovereigns of England. It was contractual in nature so that the acceptance of the throne was tied to their express promise to recognize the rights set forth in the Bill of Rights. A violation of that agreement would terminate the right of William and Mary to rule. The Bill of Rights lays down limits on the powers of the monarch and sets out the rights of Parliament. It further, and most importantly for this discussion, sets out certain rights of the individual, including: the right to bear arms for self-defense, the right of Due Process, the right to petition government, such criminal defense rights as the right to be free from excessive bail, the right to a jury trial for the crime of high treason, and the right against any cruel and/or unusual punishment, the guarantee that there would be no taxation without representation, the right to be free of a standing army in times of peace, and the right to be free of any quartering of troops. [Great Britain is unlike the United States in that it has no formal Constitution; rather, the English Bill of Rights, taken together with the Magna Carta, the Petition of Right, the Habeas Corpus Act 1679 and the Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949 are considered, in total, as the uncodified British constitution].
The colonies being organized under grants and agreements from England, it was assumed that English traditions applied. The colonists considered themselves British subjects and as such, they believed they were entitled to all the rights and privileges of Englishmen. That is why they reacted as they did to the taxes imposed by Parliament, why one protest theme was "No Taxation Without Representation," why the Sons of Liberty formed, why they harassed the colonial stamp collectors and stamp masters until they resigned, why they engaged in acts of civil disobedience (such as preventing the British from unloading their ships at colonial ports) or hanging colonial governors in effigy, why they tossed crates of tea into the Boston Harbor, why men like Patrick Henry called for the raising and training of colonial militias, and why they were willing to confront the Redcoats with their muskets when they sought to destroy the stockpiles of colonial ammunition. It seemed that once again, as English history has shown true, Englishmen would have to exert their rights and demand that the King to respect them. Proper boundaries would once again have to be established.
King John's rejection of the Magna Carta (1215) and King Charles's rejection of the Petition of Right (1628) proved to our Founding Fathers that the system established in Great Britain provided only arbitrary security for individual rights. They would need to come up with a different system of government, grounded on more "enlightened" principles and "enlightened" government philosophy. And that is exactly what they did in the Declaration of Independence - announcing that the American states were united on the concept of Individual Sovereignty, that government power originated from the People, to serve the People, and not from kings ("the Divine Right of Kings") to serve kings.
With what many believe to be divine guidance and protection, the thirteen original colonies fought and won their independence from Great Britain in 1781. Lord Cornwallis surrendered his British troops to General George Washington, Commander of the Continental Army, on October 19, 1781 and the Treaty of Paris, signed in September 1783, marked the official end of the struggle. Since the colonies worked together in a collaborative effort to communicate grievances and concerns to King George and Parliament and to engage in a concerted effort to prevent war, but then once war came, to fight and manage the war effort, it seemed only natural to continue to collaborate in their independence. The first attempt at a loose union of states, under the Articles of Confederation, was not very successful. The government lacked the enforcement power needed to effectively act on behalf of the states, such as the power to collect revenue to pay the war debt.
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