Since few powers had been delegated to the national government, few rights needed to be reserved. On the state level, declarations of rights did not always succeed in keeping state assemblies from trampling on individual liberties in the absence of checks and balances.
The United States Constitution
When the delegates met in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 to write a new Constitution, they were primarily concerned with strengthening the national government, but they were aware that with strength would come danger. Thus, although they invested such significant new powers in Congress as the power to regulate inter-state and foreign commerce and the power to act directly on individual citizens, the framers of the constitution were also concerned to corral these new powers. Accordingly they divided Congress into two houses, and created an independent executive and judiciary. James Madison, a key architect of the new document, argued that the new government would be less likely to result in individual injustice than would state governments.
In a sense, the entire Constitution was intended to be a bill of rights. The founders chiefly relied on institution protections for such rights, but they also built specific limitations into the Constitution.
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