Total run time:
6m
A Bill of Rights was not part of the Constitution of 1787. Its omission was hotly debated.
Some Founding Fathers, most famously Alexander Hamilton, argued that it was not necessary to include a bill of rights in the Constitution.
"the constitution is itself in every rational sense, and to every useful purpose, A BILL OF RIGHTS. The several bills of rights, in Great-Britain, form its constitution, and conversely the constitution of each state is its bill of rights. And the proposed constitution, if adopted, will be the bill of rights of the union.”
-Federalist No. 84
Yet the Constitution was quickly amended, with ten amendments (which later came to be known as the Bill of Rights) added in 1791. Seventeen additional amendments have been added since then.
What is the relationship between the Structural Constitution and the Bill of Rights? How do different Amendments affect the scope of power of the federal government? We explore in this series.
Who proposed the Bill of Rights? Was it always known by this nomenclature?
Professor Randy Barnett explains that James Madison wrote a “bill of rights” similar to the “Declaration of Rights” in the Virginia state constitution. Madison’s
...
Who proposed the Bill of Rights? Was it always known by this nomenclature?
Professor Randy Barnett explains that James Madison wrote a “bill of rights” similar to the “Declaration of Rights” in the Virginia state constitution. Madison’s bill of rights was added as a list of amendments to the US Constitution and thus was simply known as the “Amendments.” Only in the 20th century did the first ten amendments become known as the “Bill of Rights.”
Professor Randy E. Barnett is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he teaches constitutional law and contracts, and is Director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution.
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As always, the Federalist Society takes no position on particular legal or public policy issues; all expressions of opinion are those of the speaker.
Subscribe to the series’ playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWwcngsYgoUVuiVj2TkrPolK5t6jD4PKa
Total run time:
6m
Course:
Total videos:
3
Difficulty:
First Year
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