United States Bill of Rights

United States Bill Of Rights

The Bill of Rights is the collective name for the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. These limitations serve to protect the natural rights of liberty and property. They guarantee a number of personal freedoms, limit the government's power in judicial and other proceedings, and reserve some powers to the states and the public. While originally the amendments applied only to the federal government, most of their provisions have since been held to apply to the states by way of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The amendments were introduced by James Madison to the 1st United States Congress as a series of legislative articles. They were adopted by the House of Representatives on August 21, 1789, formally proposed by joint resolution of Congress on September 25, 1789, and came into effect as Constitutional Amendments on December 15, 1791, through the process of ratification by three-fourths of the States. While twelve amendments were passed by Congress, only ten were originally passed by the states. Of the remaining two, one was adopted as the Twenty-seventh Amendment and the other technically remains pending before the states.

Originally, the Bill of Rights implicitly legally protected only white men, excluding American Indians, people considered to be "black" (now described as African Americans), and women. These exclusions were not explicit in the Bill of Rights' text, but were well understood and applied.

The Bill of Rights plays a key role in American law and government, and remains a vital symbol of the freedoms and culture of the nation. One of the first fourteen copies of the Bill of Rights is on public display at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

Read more about United States Bill Of Rights:  Philadelphia Convention, Ratification Process, Status of The Original 14 Copies, Excluded From The Bill of Rights, Display and Honoring of The Bill of Rights

Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states, bill and/or rights:

    “In the United States the whites speak well of the Blacks but think bad about them, whereas the Blacks talk bad and think bad about the whites. Whites fear Blacks, because they have a bad conscience, and Blacks hate whites because they need not have a bad conscience.”
    —Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)

    “What lies behind facts like these: that so recently one could not have said Scott was not perfect without earning at least sorrowful disapproval; that a year after the Gang of Four were perfect, they were villains; that in the fifties in the United States a nothing-man called McCarthy was able to intimidate and terrorise sane and sensible people, but that in the sixties young people summoned before similar committees simply laughed.”
    —Doris Lessing (b. 1919)

    “Nullification ... means insurrection and war; and the other states have a right to put it down.”
    —Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)

    “It is my belief that there are “absolutes” in our Bill of Rights, and that they were put there on purpose by men who knew what words meant, and meant their prohibitions to be “absolute.””
    —Hugo Black (b. 1922)

    “In our governments the real power lies in the majority of the community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of government contrary to the sense of the constituents, but from the acts in which government is the mere instrument of the majority.”
    —James Madison (1751–1836)