United States Government​

The Bill of Rights and Other Amendments to the Constitution

The Constitution is a living document. Its meaning has changed over time as a result of new interpretations of its provisions. The framers also allowed for changes to the Constitution, outlining the procedures required to amend it in Article V. Proposed by Congress in September 1789 and adopted in 1791, the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, known collectively as the Bill of Rights, place limits on the federal and state governments’ power to curtail individual rights and freedoms. Besides being precepts of government, the guarantees in the Bill of Rights have binding legal force.

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Legislation

Amendments to the
U.S. Constitution

Amending the Constitution requires a proposal by a two-thirds vote of each house of Congress or by a national convention called for at the request of the legislatures of two-thirds of the states. Proposed amendments must be ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures or by popularly elected conventions in as many states, depending on the decision of Congress. A total of 27 amendments have been made to the Constitution. Read more.

Bill of Rights

The Federalists’ vision of a strong central government triumphed over the objections of the Anti-Federalists in the struggle over the crafting of the Constitution of the United States. Three delegates to the Constitutional Convention, most prominently George Mason, did not sign the document largely because it lacked a bill of rights, and several states ratified it only on the understanding that a bill of rights would be quickly added. In response, the first 10 amendments to the Constitution were adopted as a single unit, the Bill of Rights, which spells out the rights of the people of the United States in relation to their government.

First Amendment

Prohibits laws “respecting an establishment of religion” and protects freedoms of religion, speech, and the press and the rights to assemble peaceably and petition the government. The clauses of the amendment are often called the establishment clause, the free exercise clause, the free speech clause, the free press clause, the assembly clause, and the petition clause. Read more.

1st Amendment

Freedom of Speech

Freedom of speech is the right to express information, ideas, and opinions free of government restrictions based on content. In his opinion in Schenk v. U.S. (1919), U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., determined that a restriction on freedom of speech is legitimate only if the speech in question poses a “clear and present danger.” Many cases involving freedom of speech and of the press also have concerned defamation, obscenity, and prior restraint.​

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Second Amendment

Guarantees and protects the people’s right to “keep and bear arms” For more than two centuries there was a consensus among judges as well as scholars that the Second Amendment guaranteed only the right of individuals to defend their liberties by participating in a state militia. However, by the late 20th century the “right to carry and use arms for self-defense” interpretation of the amendment had been adopted by a significant minority of judges. The self-defense view also seemed to be taken for granted by large segments of the American public, especially those who consistently opposed gun control. Read more.

District of Columbia v. Heller

In this case the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual’s right to possess firearms independent of service in a state militia and to use firearms for traditionally lawful purposes, including self-defense within the home. Read more.

Gun Control

Gun control is a controversial and emotional issue. Proponents of gun-control legislation assert that the strict enforcement of gun-control laws saves lives and reduces crime. Opponents of gun control argue that minimal restrictions on guns ensure that individuals have adequate means for self-defense and that a wider distribution of firearms results in safer communities. Read more.

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Third Amendment

Prohibits the involuntary quartering of soldiers in private homes during peacetime Before and during the American Revolution, the British kept what amounted to standing armies in the colonies, with soldiers commonly quartered in private homes. Because there have been few conflicts on American soil since then, the amendment has had little occasion to be invoked. Read more.

Quartering Act

In 1765 the British Parliament passed this amendment to the annual Mutiny Act. It required colonial authorities to provide food, drink, quarters, fuel, and transportation to British forces stationed in their towns. Read more.

Fourth Amendment​

Forbids unreasonable searches and seizures of individuals and property; requires probable cause for search warrants; prohibits nonspecific search warrants. The Fourth Amendment is the foundation of criminal law jurisprudence. It articulates both the rights of criminally accused persons and the responsibilities of law-enforcement officials. Read more.

Exclusionary Rule

The Exclusionary rule is the principle that evidence seized by police in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution may not be used against a criminal defendant at trial. Read more.

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Fifth Amendment

Protects the criminally accused by requiring indictment by a grand jury, prohibiting double jeopardy and forced self-incrimination, and forbidding deprivation of “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”; bars the taking of private property for public use without “just compensation”Similar to the First Amendment, the Fifth Amendment is divided into five clauses, representing five distinct, yet related, rights. Read more.

Grand Jury

A grand jury is a group of citizens that examines accusations against those charged with a crime. If the evidence warrants it, the grand jury makes formal charges on which the accused persons are later tried. Through the grand jury, regular citizens participate in bringing suspects to trial. Read more.

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Sixth Amendment

Further protects the criminally accused by establishing the rights to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury, to be informed of criminal charges, to confront hostile witnesses, and to have the assistance of counsel. The Sixth Amendment effectively established the procedures governing criminal courts. Read more.

Jury Duty

Seventh Amendment

Establishes rules governing civil trials. The Seventh Amendment’s objective was to preserve a distinction between the responsibilities of the courts (such as deciding matters of law) and those of juries (such as deciding matters of fact). Read more.

Jury

A jury is a group of citizens who participate in deciding cases brought to trial. It is made up of laypersons recruited randomly from the widest population for the trial of a particular case. Read more.

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Eighth Amendment

Prohibits excessive bail, excessive fines, and “cruel and unusual punishments”. The Constitution is silent on what is deemed “cruel” and “unusual,” and it has been left for the courts to determine precisely what is and what is not permissible under the law. Read more.

Bail

Bail is a procedure by which a judge releases someone who has been arrested or imprisoned, upon receipt of security to ensure the released prisoner’s later appearance in court. Read more.

Punishment

Also called the death penalty, capital punishment is the execution of a criminal offender sentenced to death after conviction by a court of law. There is much debate about its morality and effect on criminal behavior. Read more.

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Ninth Amendment

Establishes that the enumeration of certain rights in the Constitution does not “deny or disparage” other rights “retained by the people” Its purpose was to assert the principle that the enumerated rights are not exhaustive and final. While it emerged in arguments related to the extension of rights to protect privacy, there has been considerable debate as to what protections, if any, are guaranteed by it. Read more.

Griswold v. State of Connecticut

In 1965, in Griswold v. State of Connecticut, the Supreme Court held that married couples had the right to use birth control. The Court ruled that Connecticut’s birth control law was unconstitutional based on rights set down in the Fourth and Fifth amendments that protect an individual’s home and private life from interference by the government. In his concurring opinion, Associate Justice Arthur Goldberg also cited the Ninth Amendment as a basis for the decision. Read more.

Tenth Amendment

Reserves to the states those powers not delegated to the federal government or prohibited to the states by the Constitution. It was added to the Constitution largely to relieve the fears of states’ rights advocates. Read more.

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US constitution

McCulloch v. Maryland

In the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), Chief Justice John Marshall affirmed the constitutional doctrine of Congress’s “implied powers.” The ruling determined that Congress had not only the powers expressly conferred upon it by the Constitution but also all authority “appropriate” to carry out such powers.
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Nullification crisis

The nullification crisis was a conflict between the U.S. state of South Carolina and the federal government of the United States in 1832–33. It was driven by South Carolina politician John C. Calhoun, who opposed the federal imposition of the tariffs of 1828 and 1832. The resolution of the crisis in favor of the federal government helped to undermine the nullification doctrine, the constitutional theory that upheld the right of states to nullify federal acts within their boundaries.
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states' rights

In the 18th and 19th centuries the concept of states’ rights implied that each state had inherent rights and sovereignty. Before and after the Civil War, Southern states shared the belief that each of them was sovereign and should have jurisdiction over its most important affairs. By the end of the 20th century, the term was applied more broadly to a variety of efforts aimed at reducing the power of the national government.
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Reconstruction Amendments

Reconstruction was the period after the American Civil War, from roughly 1865 to 1877, during which attempts were made to implement full freedom and constitutional rights for African Americans following emancipation. The federal government sought to redress the inequities of slavery and to solve the problems arising from the readmission to the Union of the 11 states that had seceded from the United States. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, which extended civil and legal protections to former slaves and African Americans in general, are often referred to as the Reconstruction Amendments.

13th Amendment

Formally abolishes slavery. Although the words slavery and slave are never mentioned in the Constitution, the Thirteenth Amendment voided those sections of the Constitution which had tacitly codified the “peculiar institution” The Emancipation Proclamation, issued by Pres. Abraham Lincoln in 1863 during the Civil War, had freed only those slaves held in territory under control of the Confederacy. Read more.

Emancipation Proclamation

By freeing the slaves in the Confederacy, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation (January 1, 1863) lifted the Civil War to the level of a crusade for human freedom and dealt a deathblow to slavery in the whole United States, a fate that was officially sealed by the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. Read more.

14th Amendment

Grants citizenship and equal civil and legal rights to African Americans and slaves who were emancipated after the Civil War. It prohibited the states from depriving any person of “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” and from denying anyone within a state’s jurisdiction equal protection under the law. However, its attempt to guarantee civil rights was circumvented for many decades by the post-Reconstruction-era black codes, Jim Crow laws, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s “separate but equal” ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Read more.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was intended to end discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin. It is often called the most important U.S. law on civil rights since Reconstruction. The act gave federal law enforcement agencies the power to prevent racial discrimination in employment, voting, and the use of public facilities. Read more.

15th Amendment

Guarantees that the right to vote cannot be denied based on “race, color, or previous condition of servitude”. During Reconstruction, the amendment was successful in encouraging African Americans to vote, and many African Americans were elected to public office in the former Confederate states. By the 1890s, however, the enactment of poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses—in addition to violence—had completely reversed those trends. Read more.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

One of the most far-reaching pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history, the Voting Rights Act aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote under the Fifteenth Amendment. It suspended literacy tests, provided for federal approval of proposed changes to voting laws or procedures in jurisdictions that had previously used tests, and directed the U.S. attorney general to challenge the use of poll taxes for state and local elections. Read more.

Other
Amendments

In addition to the amendments mentioned above, other far-reaching amendments include the Seventeenth (1913), which provided for direct election of senators; the Nineteenth (1920), which mandated women's suffrage; the Twenty-fourth, which prohibited the imposition of poll taxes; and the Twenty-sixth (1971), which granted suffrage to citizens 18 years of age and older.

17th Amendment​

In providing for the direct election of U.S. senators by the voters of the states, the 17h Amendment altered the electoral method established in Article I of the Constitution, which had provided for the appointment of senators by the state legislatures. Adopted in the Progressive era, the amendment reflected popular dissatisfaction with the corruption and inefficiency that characterized the legislative election of U.S. senators in many states.
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19th Amendment

From the founding of the United States, women were almost universally excluded from voting. In 1878 a constitutional amendment was introduced in Congress that would enshrine women's suffrage for all elections. It would be reintroduced in every Congress thereafter, but it was not until 1919 that both houses of Congress passed the 19th Amendment, which officially extended the right to vote to women.
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women's suffrage

The movement for women's suffrage in the United States started in the early 19th century during the agitation against slavery and intensified in July 1848 at a convention in Seneca Falls, New York, the hometown of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who, along with Susan B. Anthony led the American suffragist movement for the next 50 years. Their work culminated in the passage and ratification of the 19th Amendment.
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24th Amendment

The 24th Amendment was adopted as a response to policies adopted in various Southern states after the ending of Reconstruction to limit the political participation of African Americans. It prohibited the federal and state governments from imposing poll taxes before a citizen could participate in a federal election.
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26th Amendment

Partly spurred by student activism during the Vietnam War and the fact that 18-year-olds could be drafted to fight in the war but could not vote in federal elections in most states, the 26th Amendment extended voting rights to citizens aged 18 years or older.
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Equal Rights amendment

In March 1972, the Senate approved the Equal Rights Amendment, which was designed mainly to invalidate many state and federal laws that discriminated against women. However, the amendment was not ratified by the requisite majority of 38 states by the June 1982 deadline. Nevertheless, in January 2020 Virginia became the 38th state to ratify it, and the House of Representatives voted to repeal the deadline, but the amendment’s fate remained in doubt, partly because five states had rescinded their earlier ratification.
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