Part 4: The Bill of Rights

Part 4: The Bill of Rights

Paraphrase:
First Amendment: Freedom of religion, press, assembly, and petition: congress may not interfere with any of these rights.
Second Amendment: Each state can maintain a militia, and has the right to bear arms.
Third Amendment: Soldiers may not take refuge in any house without the consent of the owner.
Fourth Amendment: A person’s house or property may not be subject to unreasonable searches without a warrant.
Fifth Amendment: People cannot be tried unless they have been formally indicted or accused by a grand jury. They cannot be tried twice for the same crime. They cannot be required to give evidence against themselves. Everyone is entitled to the due process of the law.
Sixth Amendment: The accused has a right to a speedy and public trial by an unbiased jury in the state in which the crime was committed. Witnesses must be obtained through a compulsory process.
Seventh Amendment: Only in Civil cases that do not involve criminal behavior, a jury is allowed only in cases involving more than 20 dollars, unless both parties agree to waive that right.
Eighth Amendment: Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishment inflicted.
Ninth Amendment: If a right is not listed in the constitution it does not mean we do not have that right.
Tenth Amendment: The states can do anything outside of the parameters of the constitution.

There are a few things that I would like to clarify about the constitution:

The Second Amendment states that “ A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The Constitution provides people the right to bear arms with only under the premise that they be used, if need be, in a militia with the intention of maintaining the security of the state. We do have the right to have guns so that we could potentially fight for the security a state, but nowhere does it say that we have the right to use them for sport, target practice or hunting. During the time when the constitution was written people did not have the liberty of calling a police officer, someone who helps to protect the laws and rights provided by each state. We no longer need to defend ourselves in such a manner, technically we have people do that for us. If anything this amendment provides us to have guns and use them in an organized militia under no other circumstance.

A person’s right to privacy, provided by the Fourth Amendment is often infringed upon. Ever since the terrorist attack on the world trade center the police have began searched bags in the subway, airports, and in libraries. One could say that those individual places have the right to search because their property is at risk of damage or one person’s bad decision could harm others. However they infringe on our right to privacy by checking peoples bags and just like the people that check the bags we have as much of a right to keep our property safe as they do to check our bags.

The Sixth and Seventh Amendments provide insight into the American peoples fear of a government that can wrongfully arrest innocent people. They show our fear of becoming a dictatorship similar to the previous power that had once controlled the people of the US. A person could, legally, rot in a prison cell or be tortured, but our founding fathers wanted to disallow such atrocities.

The US has, in multiple ways, infringed upon the rights granted us by the Eighth Amendment. The US government, throughout history, has allowed cruel punishment such as the electric chair, lethal injection, and hanging. Seeing as there is no one definition of cruel, for what is cruel to one person could easily vary with what may be considered cruel to another. So any of those supposedly more humane executions are equally cruel as torture.

The Ninth Amendment is interesting in comparison to the rest of the Amendments because it reminds us where our rights ultimately come from. Aside from the rights granted us by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, we have unwritten rights that need not be written. These rights are not written the government, they are written by the people. Breathing and eating are perfect examples of these undocumented rights. Even abortion should technically be allowed because the only possible argument against allowing it is a religious one. Since legally religion cannot play a part in the government we should be allowed the right to abortion in every state. The fact is legislation originates in the minds of the people and rights are more important than tradition.