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.