Bills Of Rights In The Common Law

This book argues that judges sacrifice individual rights by using less than their full powers in order to appear democratically legitimate.

"Bibliographical notes": pages 527-544.

This book is a documentary history of the rights found in the American state constitutions adopted between 1776 and 1790. Despite the rich tradition of rights at the state level, rights in America have been identified almost exclusively with the national Bill of Rights. Indeed, there is no work that provides a comprehensive treatment of the early state declarations of rights. Rather, these declarations have been viewed as halting first steps towards the adoption of the national Bill of Rights in 1791. Bringing together the full text of the rights provisions from the 13 original states and Vermont, this book presents America’s first tradition of rights on its own terms and as part of this country’s heritage of rights. Early chapters will examine the sources of these rights and provide a comparative framework. An introduction to each chapter will review that state’s colonial history, focusing on any charters or legislation related to rights protections that help explain its constitutional provisions. This work will make it possible for students, scholars, and interested citizens to rediscover the first fruits of the American Revolution.

Levy offers a panoramic view of the liberties secured by the first ten amendments to the Constitution--a penetrating analysis of the background of the Bill of Rights and the meanings of each provision of the amendments. 5 illustrations.

With a foreword by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court. An Engaging, Accessible Guide to the Bill of Rights for Everyday Citizens. In The Bill of Rights: A User's Guide, award-winning author and constitutional scholar Linda R. Monk explores the remarkable history of the Bill of Rights amendment by amendment, the Supreme Court's interpretation of each right, and the power of citizens to enforce those rights. Stories of the ordinary people who made the Bill of Rights come alive are featured throughout. These include Fannie Lou Hamer, a Mississippi sharecropper who became a national civil rights leader; Clarence Earl Gideon, a prisoner whose handwritten petition to the Supreme Court expanded the right to counsel; Mary Beth Tinker, a 13-year-old whose protest of the Vietnam War established free speech rights for students; Michael Hardwick, a bartender who fought for privacy after police entered his bedroom unlawfully; Suzette Kelo, a nurse who opposed the city's takeover of her working-class neighborhood; and Simon Tam, a millennial whose 10-year trademark battle for his band "The Slants" ended in a unanimous Supreme Court victory. Such people prove that, in the words of Judge Learned Hand, "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court, can save it." Exploring the history, scope, and meaning of the first ten amendments-as well as the Fourteenth Amendment, which nationalized them and extended new rights of equality to all-The Bill of Rights: A User's Guide is a powerful examination of the values that define American life and the tools that every citizen needs.

The fundamental, inalienable rights and privileges set forth in the Bill of Rights represent the very foundations of American liberty. The Complete Bill of Rights is a documentary record of the process by which these rights and privileges were defined and recorded as law. Now in its second edition, The Complete Bill of Rights contains double the content featured in the first edition. This new edition includes all the background texts for the origins and debate of the ratification of the Bill of Rights and presents them clause by clause in a complete, accurate, and accessible format. Arranged in chronological order, the work presents each clause in its finished form, and traces its development from its proposal through drafting through adoption. Cogan presents every draft of the text and every documentary source, including state convention proposals, state, colonial, and English constitutional texts, sources in caselaw and treatises, and State and Colonial statutory and decisional law. He includes data from diaries and correspondence, pamphlets and newspapers, as well as the Congressional and State debates, including the correspondence of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and John Adams among many others who debated the issues that the Supreme Court considers law today. The book also contains each version of the drafts from the manuscript collections of the National Archives and Library of Congress. The result is the most detailed and useful record of the debate over the Bill of Rights available. This first new edition since 1997 substantially expands on the previous edition, providing the same invaluable texts for two fundamental protections of liberty found in the Constitution of 1789 (though not in the Bill of Rights): the protections under habeas corpus and the privileges and immunities clauses. Each chapter expands the background discussion of rights, and provides pertinent texts in contemporary legal dictionaries to meet the increasing interest of federal and state courts in additional sources for interpretation. The second edition also provides a chapter-by-chapter discussion of rights by treatise and abridgement writers in addition to Blackstone. Finally, all margin notes and footnotes in the dictionaries and treatises are included, so the reader has access to the totality of the original statues and case law upon which the drafters relied. The Complete Bill of Rights is the only comprehensive collection of texts essential to understanding the Bill of Rights. Organized in an accessible and practical manner, it is an invaluable tool for law students, judges, lawyers, and law clerks, as well as scholars of the law, history, and political science.

The Bill of Rights. The Amendments, 1-10, Over 250 Supreme Court cases. Essays on The Issues: Academic Freedom, Freedom of Assembly & association, Automobile searches, Bad tendency test, Bail, Right to birth control, Blasphemy, Capital punishment, Censorship, Chilling effect, Civil rights and liberties, Clear and present danger test, Commerce clause, Commercial speech, Comstock Act, Conscientious objection, Freedom of contract, Right to counsel, Cruel and unusual punishment, Double jeopardy, Procedural due process, Substantive due process, Elastic clause, Espionage Acts, Exclusionary rule, First Amendment absolutism, balancing, & speech tests, Flag desecration, Gag order, Gay & lesbian rights, Grand jury, Hatch Act, Hate crimes, Hicklin rule, Indian Bill of Rights, Indigent criminal defendants, Japanese American relocation, Judicial scrutiny, Trial by jury, Libel, Loyalty oaths, Miranda rights, Miscegenation laws, Natural law, Newsroom searches, Nuremberg Files, Obscenity & pornography, Right of petition, Preferred freedoms doctrine, Presumption of innocence, Preventive detention, Prior restraint, Right of privacy, Privileges & immunities, Probable cause, Property rights, Public forum doctrine, Public use doctrine, Released time, Establishment of religion, Freedom of religion, School prayer, Search & seizue, Search warrent requirement, Sedition Act of 1798, Seditious libel, Immunity against self-incrimination, Silver platter doctrine, Smith Act, Freedom of speech & press, Speedy trial, States' rights, Stop & frisk rule, Symbolic speech, Takings clause, Time, place & manner regulations, Unprotected speech, Confrontation of witnesses, and Zoning.

Our Documents is a collection of 100 documents that the staff of the National Archives has judged most important to the development of the United States. The entry for each document includes a short introduction, a facsimile, and a transcript of the document. Backmatter includes further reading, credits, and index. The book is part of the much larger Our Documents initiative sponsored by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), National History Day, the Corporation for National and Community Service, and the USA Freedom Corps.

The Great Rights of Mankind follows the development of individual rights from the earliest English antecedents through their modern interpretations by the courts. It is arguably the single best short book written on the Bill of Rights.

Reproduction of the original: The Right to Privacy by Samuel D. Warren, Louis D. Brandeis