The Bill of Rights Primer: A Citizen's Guidebook to the American Bill of Rights - Hardcover

Amar, Akhil Reed; Adams, Les

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1620875721 ISBN 13: 9781620875728

Verlag: Skyhorse, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

Many Americans reference the Bill of Rights, a document that represents many of the freedoms that define the United States. Who doesn’t know about the First Amendment’s freedom of religion or Second Amendment’s right to bear arms? In this pocket-sized volume, Akhil Reed Amar and Les Adams offer a wealth of knowledge about the Bill of Rights that goes beyond a basic understanding.

The Bill of Rights Primer is an authoritative guide to all American freedoms. Uncluttered and well-organized, this text is perfect for those who want to study up on the Bill of Rights without needing a law degree to do so.

This elementary guidebook presents a short historical survey of the people, events, decrees, legislation, writings, and cultural milestones, in England and the American colonies, that influenced the Founding Fathers as they drafted the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. With helpful comments and fun facts in the margins, the book will provide a deeper understanding of the Bill of Rights, exhibiting that it is not a stagnant document but one with an evolving meaning shaped by historical events, such as the American Civil War and Reconstruction.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Les Adams is a lawyer, editor, and publisher. He has a BA in English from the University of North Carolina, an MA in English from Columbia University, a JD, cum laude, from the Cumberland Law School of Samford University, and an LLD from Iowa’s William Penn College. He is a member of the Alabama Bar Association and a life member of the National Rifle Association. He resides in Houston, Texas.

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The Bill of Rights Primer

A Citizen's Guidebook to the American Bill of Rights

By Akhil Reed Amar, Les Adams

Skyhorse Publishing

Copyright © 2019 Akhil Reed Amar and Les Adams
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-62087-572-8

Contents

About this Book, 
Preface: The Development of the Concept of Political Freedom in England and the American Colonies, 
Creation and Reconstruction: An Overview, 
PART I: CREATION, 
I FIRST THINGS FIRST, 
II OUR FIRST AMENDMENT, 
III THE SECOND AND THIRD AMENDMENTS (THE MILITARY AMENDMENTS), 
IV THE FOURTH AMENDMENT (SEARCHES, SEIZURES, AND FIFTH AMENDMENT TAKINGS), 
V THE FIFTH, SIXTH, SEVENTH, AND EIGHTH AMENDMENTS (THE JURY AMENDMENTS), 
VI THE NINTH AND TENTH AMENDMENTS (THE POPULAR-SOVEREIGNTY AMENDMENTS), 
VII THE BILL OF RIGHTS AS A CONSTITUTION, 
PART II: RECONSTRUCTION, 
VIII ANTEBELLUM IDEAS, 
IX THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT, 
X THE INCORPORATION PROCESS, 
XI RECONSTRUCTING RIGHTS, 
XII A NEW BIRTH OF FREEDOM, 
Appendix, 
THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES, 
Biographical Profiles of Notable Figures Quoted or Featured in the Text, 
Notes, 
Glossary, 
Index, 
About the Authors, 

CHAPTER 1

FIRST THINGS FIRST

How our nationalist and states'-rights traditions, and the precise way judges have "incorporated" the Bill of Rights into the Fourteenth Amendment, have slanted our view of the original Bill of Rights ... How the first two amendments proposed by the First Congress failed to achieve ratification ... How debate over their provisions revealed the philosophical differences between Federalist and Antifederalist forces that were to influence the content of the other amendments.

The Founders' Bill of Rights was, unsurprisingly, a creature of its time. Yet because its eighteenth-century words play such an active role in twenty-first-century legal discourse, we may at times forget that more than two centuries separate us from the world that birthed the Bill. Before we fix our gaze on this eighteenth-century document, let us briefly consider how nineteenth- and twentieth-century events and ideas have organized our legal thinking, predisposing us to see certain features of the original Bill of Rights and to overlook others. And before we rush to examine the words that are first in our modern Bill of Rights, let us briefly consider the words that were first in the original Bill of Rights.

More than two centuries separate us from the world that birthed the Bill

MODERN BLINDERS CONSTRICTING OUR VIEW OF THE ORIGINAL BILL OF RIGHTS

OUR NATIONALIST AND STATES'-RIGHTS TRADITIONS

Modern Americans inhabit a world whose constitutional terrain is dominated by a series of landmark Supreme Court cases that invalidated state laws and administrative practices in the name of individual constitutional rights. Many Americans now embrace a tradition that views state governments as a major threat to individual and minority rights, and federal officials — especially federal courts — as the special guardians of those rights.

This nationalist tradition has deep roots. Over the course of two centuries, the Supreme Court has struck down state and local action with far more regularity than it has invalidated acts of our federal government. Early in the twentieth century, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes declared, "I do not think the United States would come to an end if we lost our power to declare an Act of Congress void. I do think the Union would be imperiled if we could not make that declaration as to the laws of the several States." Justice Holmes had reached maturity during the Civil War era, and he understood from firsthand experience that the constitutional amendments adopted following the war — particularly the Fourteenth Amendment — reflected a similar suspicion of state governments.

The nationalist tradition, however, is far older than Reconstruction; its deepest roots lie in Philadelphia, not Appomattox. An important goal of the Federalist framers in the Philadelphia convention was to forge a strong set of federally enforceable rights against abusive state governments. Several of these limits on states appear in Article I, section 10 of the original Constitution. Indeed, the Federalists' effort to create a strong central government drew much of its life from their dissatisfaction with small-scale politics and their belief, as exemplified in James Madison's Federalist No. 10, that an "enlargement" of the government's geographic "sphere" would improve the caliber of public decision making.

Our states'-rights traditions are older than the Union itself

Alongside this nationalist tradition, however, lay a states'-rights tradition — also championed by Madison — that extolled the ability of local governments to protect citizens against abuses by central authorities. The foundations of this states'-rights tradition are even older than those of the nationalist tradition — indeed, older than the Union itself. In the seventeenth century, British North America began not as a single continent-wide entity but as a series of different and distinct colonies, each founded at a different moment with a distinct charter, a distinct history, a distinct immigration pattern, a distinct set of laws and legal institutions. For example, in 1760 "Virginia" was, legally speaking, an accomplished fact — its House of Burgesses had been meeting since the 1620s — but "America," as a legal entity, was still waiting to be born. Also, during the fateful years between the end of the French and Indian War and the beginning of the Revolutionary one, colonial governments took the lead in protecting their citizens from perceived abuses of the English Parliament. Colonial legislatures kept a close eye on the central government; sounded public alarms whenever they saw oppression in the works; and organized political, economic, and (ultimately) military opposition to perceived British evils.

In helping to draft the Constitution and Bill of Rights, Madison was quite careful to identify the limits, as well as the affirmative scope, of states' rights. State governments could monitor the federal one and mobilize political opposition to federal laws seen as oppressive, but no state entity could unilaterally nullify those laws or secede from the Union. Moreover, Madison's scheme gave the federal government a crucial role in protecting citizens from abusive state governments. Later spokesmen for the states'-rights position, like John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis, disregarded these vital limits. Not only did their arguments on behalf of nullification and secession misread the Constitution's federal structure, but these arguments were deployed on behalf of slavery, the ultimate violation of human dignity. The Civil War was the second war fought on American soil over the intertwined issues of states' rights and human rights, but this time the relation between the two sets of rights was different. In sharp contrast to the Revolutionaries' rhetoric of the 1770s, the Rebels' rhetoric of federalism in the 1860s came to be seen as conflicting with, rather than supportive of, true freedom.

Modern Americans are still living with the legacy of the Civil War, with modern rhetorical battle lines tracking those laid down more than a century ago. Nationalists recognize the need for a strong national government to protect individuals against abusive state governments, but often ignore the threat posed by a...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Skyhorse
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1620875721
• ISBN 13: 9781620875728
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 424
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar