The Bill Of Rights Essay, Research Paper
The Bill of Rights
Bill of Rights
The first ten amendments to the US constitution are called the Bill of
Rights because they provide basic legal protection for individual rights. The
terms also applied to the English Bill of Rights of 1689 and the Canadian Bill
of Rights 1960, and to similar guarantees in the constitutions of the American
states.
From the perspective of two centuries, it can be said that Madison chose
well among they pyramid of proposal sin the state. he included all the great
rights appropriate for constitutional protection. The US Bill of Rights
contains the classic inventory of individual rights, and it has served as the
standard for all subsequenent attempts to sage guard human rights.
The first American use of the term was in 1774 when the first
Continental Congress adopted the declaration and resolves, which was popularly
termed the Bill of Rights because it was an American equivalent of the English
Bill of Rights. Two years later came the Virginia declaration of rights, which
contained the first guarantees for individual right single gully enforceable
constitution. The distinctive feature of the provision in American Bill of
Rights is that they are enforced by the courts.
From the time they first settled in Virgin and Massachusetts, the
American colonist relied upon the rights enjoyed by Englishmen. The struggle for
independence, however, demonstrated to them that rights not specified and
codified in constitutional documents were insecure. The result was a movement
as soon as independence was declared, to adopt bindings constitutions that
limited governmental power and protected individual rights. Seven of the
thirteen states adopted constitutions that included specific bills of rights.
The first state bill of rights was the Virginia Declaration of Rights, adopted
as part of the state b’s first constitution on June 12,1776.
Virginia’s declaration, drafted mainly by George Manson, served as the
model both for similar state documents and for the US Bill of Rights. It
provided guarantees for most of the rights secured in the latter document.