What is a capital crime?  An infamous crime?  A presentment?  An indictment?  A grand jury?  How do the proceedings of a grand jury compare with those of a petit jury?  Why the differences?  Why the exception in the first clause of the amendment?  Can a convicted and sentenced person ask for a new trial?  Under what other circumstances can persons be tried again?  In what connections have you heard of private property being taken for public use.

Taking each guarantee in the sixth amendment, show the wrongs which an accused person, presumably innocent, would suffer if the provision were not recognized or that guarantee removed.

Find out all you can about common law.  What is meant by a civil suit as distinguished from a criminal suit?  What is meant by a case in equity? When an appeal is taken what is subject to re-examination?  What is not?  Why?

What conditions determine the just amount of bail?  Of fines?  What cruel punishments have you heard or read of as being administered by public authority?  When and where were such punishments not “unusual”?  Was the eighth amendment necessary?  What limit is there to things which “The People” may do?  To the powers of the United States government?  To those of a State government?

Find the history behind each provision in the ten amendments.  From what country did we obtain the notions that the rights here preserved belong to freemen?  From under what other country could the Colonies have come ready to be the United States as we love it, or from what other country could we have inherited such notions?

Since these ten amendments are intended for the protection of individuals against governmental oppression, it will be an excellent scheme now for the student to arrange in the form of a tabulation the various directions in which such protection is guaranteed by the constitution as amended.  The following is simply suggestive: 

I. From Legislative Oppression.—­1.  Thought; 2.  Expression; 3.  Bills of Attainder; 4. Ex post facto laws; 5.  Social distinctions; 6.  Assembly; 7.  Petition.

II.  From Executive Oppression.-1.  Military; 2.  Searches and seizures; 3.  Life, Liberty, or Property; 4.  Suspension of Habeas Corpus.

III.  From Judicial Oppression.-1.  Before trial:  arrest, bail, information as to accusation, time of trial; 2.  During trial:  publicity, jury, evidence, counsel, punishment; 3.  After trial:  retrial; 4.  Treason.

IV.  From State oppression.

ARTICLE XI.

LIMITING THE JURISDICTION of UNITED STATES COURTS.

The judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity,[1] commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States[2] by citizens of another state, or by citizens or subjects of any foreign state.[3]