Celebrate the Bill of Rights

[This article appeared as a guest column in the Gainesville Sun, December 15, 2005]

You’ve probably never heard of it, but this Thursday, December 15, is Bill of Rights Day. The event won’t generate much press, and there will be no parades celebrating the passage of the first ten amendments to the Constitution by Congress on December 15, 1791. The entire text of the ten amendments would take up less than one column of this article, but it is the foundation of the rights and freedoms of every individual in this country. The Bill of Rights frames many of the issues that confront us every day--from the death penalty, gun control, and torture of suspected terrorists, to whether Santa Claus needs to be included in a Nativity scene on the lawn of City Hall. At least one day of the year, it seems fitting to celebrate this  remarkable and enduring piece of legislation.

            No political question is more important than that of the balance of power between the government and the governed. What are the rights of the individual? How should these rights, and how can these rights, be both protected and confined by the rule of law? As we all learned in school, the Constitution created by the convened states in 1787 established a strong, centralized “federal” government, a response to the political chaos that the Articles of Confederation had spawned. Even as it was signed by 39 of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention, there were grave concerns about the absence of explicit protections of individual rights and freedoms. Indeed, one of those declining to sign the Constitution was George Mason, a delegate from Virginia and author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights in 1776. Much of Thomas Jefferson’s language in the Declaration of Independence, approved barely a month after Virginia passed Mason’s Declaration, came from that document, as did the 1789 French Declaration of the Rights of Man.

            By 1789, the Constitution had become a reality, having been ratified by the required number of existing states. Some states had ratified with the understanding that a Bill of Rights was to be one of the first orders of business of the new Congress; two others had withheld ratification in the absence of such a bill. That was the context in which James Madison introduced to the House of Representatives twelve proposed amendments to the Constitution during the First Congress on June 8, 1789. The content and language of the amendments also borrowed heavily from Mason’s document. The ensuing debate, which took place during that summer, was a lively one. (Reading the transcript of that debate, which can be found on the web at www.constitution.org/dhbr.htm, was a breathtaking experience for me. It made the times, the issues, and the men come alive in a way I hadn’t encountered before.)

After much agonizing over the form, substance, and exact wording, the twelve proposed amendments were subsequently adopted on September 25, and sent to the states for ratification. It took more than two years for ten of those amendments--the Bill of Rights--to be ratified by enough states to become part of the Constitution. On December 15, 1941, in recognition of the continuing central role that the Bill of Rights has played in the public forum, President Franklin Roosevelt commemorated the 150^th anniversary of its adoption by proclaiming the date as National Bill of Rights Day.

            Recently, one of our Supreme Court Justices remarked about how annoyed he was by references to the Constitution as a “living document,” indicating his position on the “strict constructivist versus interpretational” debate about the Constitution. In a recent speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. (March 14, 2005), Justice Scalia railed against the radical view that  the Constitution “means whatever we want it to mean.” He added that “the Constitution is not a living organism, for Pete's sake."

I respectfully disagree with Justice Scalia. Just pick up the newspaper, any day of the week, to find one or more stories about controversies making reference to the nature and limits of individual rights, or to the interpretation of the Bill of Rights in the context of modern society. Do students have the right to initiate group prayers in public schools (First Amendment)? Does the government have the right to control or monitor gun ownership (Fourth Amendment)? Is torture, even in pursuit of public safety or national security, prohibited (Tenth Amendment)? Can one suspected of terrorist activity be held without bail, without formal charges, and without opportunity to “be confronted with the witnesses against him” (Eighth Amendment)? Can the government monitor and access “private” data and conversations without warrant in cases of national security (Sixth Amendment)? The recent debate over the renewal of the Patriot Act and the tension between individual civil rights and the “greater good” have highlighted, perhaps more than any other news story in recent memory, the fact that the Bill of Rights, and debate over its meaning for our times, is alive and well.

            Recently I’ve become more involved with the Bill of Rights, having taken on the presidency of the local chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU). My belief in the principle of the “wall of separation” (Jefferson’s phrase, admittedly in an informal 1802 letter to the Baptist Congregation of Danbury, Connecticut) is based on the “establishment” clause of the First Amendment, which appears, among other places, at the top of our chapter’s website. I understand that others, including some Supreme Court justices, have a different interpretation of the First Amendment. This is not the place for a debate over the meaning of the Establishment clause, or over the broader interpretation of civil rights that motivates my activities with AU. But it is the place to celebrate the fact that I have in hand, as part of the Constitution and its first ten amendments, a statement that I believe guarantees the right of freedom of religion, as well as freedom from government-sanctioned religion. All of you can think of a way in which your everyday lives are protected, improved, and enlightened by your Bill of Rights. If I were forced to select a “sacred text” for our government, the Bill of Rights would be it.

This column is part of the “Speaking Out” series, and has been brought to you by the Bill of Rights’ First Amendment (freedom of speech clause). By the way, Constitution Day is September 17, the date of the signing of the Constitution in 1787. It was established as Citizenship Day by President Truman in 1952. In December 2004, the name was changed to Constitution and Citizenship Day by Congress, which added the proviso that all schools receiving public funds must teach a lesson on the Constitution on that day.