The enumeration of those rights and the express restrictions on government power in the Bill of Rights were to ensure that that didn’t happen.Ĭongress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. The people feared that the federal government would somehow break out of the original Constitution’s enumerated-powers straitjacket and misuse its powers to violate the fundamental rights it was charged with protecting. That’s how the Bill of Rights - the first ten amendments to the Constitution - came into existence. They knew, not only from their study of history but also from personal experience, that the tendency of governments throughout history was to abuse their powers, especially in times of “emergency.” Thus, the American people demanded that the document be promptly amended to include express provisions for the guarantee of fundamental rights. However, people’s concerns were not assuaged by such arguments. Moreover, the enumeration of certain rights, the responders argued, could be construed as implicitly empowering the government to trample on rights that were not enumerated. The response to that argument was that since the Constitution expressly restricted the government to specified, enumerated powers, and since those powers did not include the power to trample on the fundamental rights of the people, it was unnecessary to expressly prohibit infringements of those fundamental rights. When the Constitution was being proposed to our American ancestors in 1787, many people expressed the concern that the document failed to specify the fundamental rights of the people that would be immune from assault by federal officials.
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