Bill of Rights 1689

“ If they are to have the useful feature of permanence they must be a growth so that the communities whose welfare they affect may grow accustomed to them as natural and so accept them. Our so-called Anglo-Saxon civil liberty with its guaranties of the Magna Charta, the Petition of Right, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus Act and the Independence of the Judiciary, constituting the unwritten British Constitution, made our American people familiar with a body of moral restraints upon executive and legislative action to secure the liberty of the individual. ”

“ The arguments which have been urged against this bill in both houses are but counterparts of the arguments used in opposition to the authority the Government sought to exercise in controlling and preventing the spread of slavery.
"Citizens of the United States, as such, are entitled to certain rights, and, being entitled to those rights, it is the duty of the Government to protect citizens in the perfect enjoyment of them. The citizen is entitled to life, liberty, and the right to property. ”

“ In Great Britain, when the king attempts to usurp the rights of the people, the declaration and bill of rights are a guard against him. A bill of rights would be necessary here to guard against our rulers. I wish to have a bill of rights, to secure those unalienable rights, which are called by some respectable writers the residuum of human rights, which are never to be given up. At the same time that it would give security to individuals, it would add to the general strength. ”

“ It does seem to me that that Government which has the exclusive right to confer citizenship, and which is entitled to demand service and allegiance, which is supreme over that due to any State, may—nay, must—protect those citizens in those rights which are fairly conducive and appropriate and necessary to the attainment of his 'protection' as a citizen. And I think those rights to contract, sue, testify, inherit, etc., which this bill says the races shall hold as races in equality, are of that class which are fairly conducive and necessary as means to the constitutional end ”

“ A proposition to adopt a measure that would have supposed that we were throwing into the general government every power not expressly reserved by the people, would have been spurned at, in that house, with the greatest indignation. Even in a single government, if the powers of the people rest on the same establishment as is expressed in this Constitution, a bill of rights is by no means a necessary measure. ”

“ The bill does equal and exact justice to the whole Union, and every part of it; it violates the right of no State or Territory; but places each on a perfect equality, and leaves the people thereof to the free enjoyment of all their rights under the Constitution. ”

“ And, of course, the existence of such awesome judicial power cannot be buttressed or created by relying on the word 'procedural.' Whether labeled as 'procedural' or 'substantive,' the Bill of Rights safeguards, far from being mere 'tools with which' other unspecified 'rights could be fully vindicated,' are the very vitals of a sound constitutional legal system designed to protect and safeguard the most cherished liberties of a free people. ”

“ If the power remains with the people, how can Congress supply the want of an affirmative grant? They cannot do it but by implication, which destroys their doctrine. The Virginia bill of rights interdicts the relinquishment of the sword and purse without control. That bill of rights secures the great and principal rights of mankind. ”

“ The Civil Rights Bill and the Freedmen's Bureau Bill and the proposed constitutional amendments, with the amendment already adopted and recognized as the law of the land, do not reach the difficulty, and cannot, unless the whole structure of the government is changed from a government by States to something like a despotic central government, with power to control even the municipal regulations of States, and to make them conform to its own despotic will. ”

“ And they prayed that the clause in the charter guaranteeing equal liberties and immunities to grantees, might not be violated, so as to "divert out of the true course the free and public current of justice." Thus did the first Assembly of Virginia insist upon the principle of the Declaration of Rights of 1776, that "no man or set of men are entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments or privileges from the community, but in consideration of public services." ”

“ That such objections to the Constitution seem strange to us to-day is partly due to the determined attitude of the men who, amid all the troubles of the time, would not consent to any arrangement from which such safeguards to free thinking and free living should be omitted. The friends of the Constitution in Boston now proposed that the convention, while adopting it, should suggest sundry amendments containing the essential provisions of a bill of rights. ”

“ From the beginning of our republic, therefore, they endeavored to enhance the Constitution with a bill of rights, a specific enumeration of fundamental rights that would prevail even against a future government inclined to abuse the power it has over the lives of citizens. ”

“ With the memory of tyranny fresh in their minds, the members of the First Congress of the United States proposed constitutional amendments known as the Bill of Rights, making explicit and forever protecting our Nation's cherished freedoms of religion, speech, press, and assembly.
But human rights have never been solely a domestic concern. Americans have always sought to share these rights with oppressed people around the world. ”

“ A majority of the people of this country, under the leadership of George Mason, Thomas Jefferson, and others, were determined to have spelled out in the Constitution in the form of a Bill of Rights those guaranties of personal security which are embodied in the first 10 amendments. ”

“ The Bill of Rights guarantees that no American shall be "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." This promise lies at the heart of our free society and reflects our reverence for impartial justice and the rule of law. ”

“ They are nearly all, to a man, opposed to this new Constitution, because, they say, they have omitted to insert a bill of rights therein, ascertaining and fundamentally establishing, the unalienable rights of men, without a full, free, and secure enjoyment of which there can be no liberty, and over which It is not necessary that a good government should have the control. ”

“ They retain all basic rights, save those inevitably removed from them by law, expressly or by implication.'
[332] ⁠It must be emphasised that the entrenchment of a Bill of Rights, enforceable by a judiciary, is designed, in part, to protect those who are the marginalised, the dispossessed and the outcasts of our society. ”

“ When the Framers wrote the Bill of Rights they enshrined in the form of constitutional guarantees those rights-in part substantive, in part procedural which experience indicated were indispensable to a free society. Some would disagree as to their importance; the debate concerning them did indeed start before their adoption and has continued to this day. Yet the constitutional conception of 'due process' must, in my view, include them all until and unless there are amendments that remove them. ”

“ By this bill it is provided that all citizens in any State or Territory shall be protected in the full and equal enjoyment and exercise of civil and political rights, including the right of suffrage. This is founded on the consideration that by the abolition of Slavery the slave became at once a citizen, subject only to such disabilities as are common to other citizens, and that by the second clause of the Constitutional Amendment Congress is empowered to enforce the abolition of Slavery by appropriate legislation. ”

“ The Virginia Convention offers some clues as to what the Founding Fathers had in mind in prohibiting cruel and unusual punishments. At one point George Mason advocated the adoption of a Bill of Rights, and Patrick Henry concurred, stating:
"By this Constitution, some of the best barriers of human rights are thrown away. Is there not an additional reason to have a bill of rights? . . . Congress, from their general powers, may fully go into business of human legislation. They may legislate, in criminal cases, from treason to the lowest offence - petty larceny. ”

“ The king accordingly vetoed it in 1697, after the ministry had required six years to discover the objections against it. They could not very well give the real reason, which was that this Bill of Rights vested supreme power and authority, under the king, in the governor, council, and the people by their representatives, while it was as yet undecided whether in New York, a “conquered” province, the people had any right to demand representation in the legislative bodies. ”

“ Thus, the Framers of the Bill of Rights did not purport to "create" rights. Rather, they designed the Bill of Rights to prohibit our Government from infringing rights and liberties presumed to be pre-existing. ”

“ Let me add, that a bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular; ”

“ Not knowing that our Constitution is a federal as well as a national Constitution, not knowing that his government clients always had the ability to make federal Articles and never had and have not now the ability to make Articles which interfere with human freedom, we shall find him stating, as axiomatic, that the slavery Amendments, which establish universal freedom, and the supposed Article of 1917, which interferes with freedom of the individual, are identical, for the reason that both affect the individual and his rights and liberties. ”

“ The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections. ”

“ If these amendments had been obeyed, they would have compelled all congresses and courts to understand that, if the government had any constitutional powers at all, they were simply powers to protect men’s natural rights, and not to destroy any of them. ”

“ It may, however, be doubted whether the epithet "unconstitutional" could be properly applied to the bill on either ground. There is, indeed, a certain vagueness in the meaning, or at all events in the frequent use of this adjective. Sometimes it is used to imply a violation of the provisions of the Great Charter, or of its later development, the Bill of Rights; sometimes to impute some imagined departure from the principles which guided the framers of those enactments. But in neither sense does it seem applicable to this bill. ”

“ Promotion of uniformity of laws has engaged the attention of State commissioners, who have drafted a code concerning negotiable instruments which has been adopted in four States. Constitutional amendment has afforded an entire race opportunity to develop from the low estate of slavery into such condition as the future shall manifest. Questions of civil rights, due process of law, and of equal protection and privilege, are constantly bringing State laws before the federal courts, as do questions of interstate commerce. ”

“ But now, when an amendment prohibiting the further introduction of slavery is proposed, the whole house is put in agitation, and we are confidently told it is unconstitutional to annex conditions to the admission of a new state into the union. The result of all this is, that all amendments and conditions are proper, which suit a certain class of gentlemen, hut whatever amendment is proposed, which does not comport with their interests or their views, is unconstitutional, and a flagrant violation of this sacred charter of our rights. ”

“ In passing the following resolution, the general assembly refrains from expressing any opinion either in favor or against the principle of slavery; but to support and maintain state rights, which it conceives necessary to be supported and maintained, to preserve the liberties of the free people of these United States, it avows its solemn conviction, that the states already confederated under one common constitution, have not a right to deprive new states of equal privileges with themselves. ”

“ We have a security that the general government can never emancipate them, for no such authority is granted; and it is admitted, on all hands, that the general government has no powers but what are expressly granted by the Constitution, and that all rights not expressed were reserved by the several states. We have obtained a right to recover our slaves in whatever part of America they may take refuge, which is a right we had not before. ”

“ The concept that the Bill of Rights and other constitutional protections against arbitrary government are inoperative when they become inconvenient or when expediency dictates otherwise is a very dangerous doctrine and, if allowed to flourish, would destroy the benefit of a written Constitution and undermine the basis of our Government. ”