US Constitution: 1st Amendment

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by AtLastHome

True...

And, ummm... the Amendments to the US Constitution are the Bill of Rights:

The original Constitution, as proposed in 1787 in Philadelphia and as ratified by the states, contained very few individual rights guarantees, as the framers were primarily focused on establishing the machinery for an effective federal government. A proposal by delegate Charles Pinckney to include several rights guarantees (including "liberty of the press" and a ban on quartering soldiers in private homes) was submitted to the Committee on Detail on August 20, 1787, but the Committee did not adopt any of Pinckney's recommendations. The matter came up before the Convention on September 12, 1787 and, following a brief debate, proposals to include a Bill or Rights in the Constitution were rejected. As adopted, the Constitution included only a few specific rights guarantees: protection against states impairing the obligation of contracts (Art. I, Section 10), provisions that prohibit both the federal and state governments from enforcing ex post facto laws (laws that allow punishment for an action that was not criminal at the time it was undertaken) and provisions barring bills of attainder (legislative determinations of guilt and punishment) (Art. I, Sections 9 and 10). The framers, and notably James Madison, its principal architect, believed that the Constitution protected liberty primarily through its division of powers that made it difficult for an oppressive majorities to form and capture power to be used against minorities. Delegates also probably feared that a debate over liberty guarantees might prolong or even threaten the fiercely-debated compromises that had been made over the long hot summer of 1787.


In the ratification debate, Anti-Federalists opposed to the Constitution, complained that the new system threatened liberties, and suggested that if the delegates had truly cared about protecting individual rights, they would have included provisions that accomplished that. With ratification in serious doubt, Federalists announced a willingness to take up the matter of a series of amendments, to be called the Bill of Rights, soon after ratification and the First Congress comes into session. The concession was undoubtedly necessary to secure the Constitution's hard-fought ratification. Thomas Jefferson, who did not attend the Constitutional Convention, in a December 1787 letter to Madison called the omission of a Bill of Rights a major mistake: "A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth."

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/proj...ghtsintro.html


Aye.. and then we can all ponder the minority leader of the US Senate referring to the Preamble as the Constitution!

Sometimes I am very thankful for having a pre-Proposition public school education in CA. We had to not only read the Constitution, but memorize the Bill of Rights. Today, in many states civics is not even being taught as it has been eliminated from many curriculums! This is the educational system from which our citizens will become voters! We often do reap what we do sow!!

Sorry, the rant of a former civics and history teacher............

WHOOPS... that is pre Proposition 13 (anti-property tax proposition) up there..... passed in CA in the 1970's and responsible for most of the fall of CA's education downward spiral ever since.