Celebrating Freedom: The 225th Anniversary of the U.S. Bill of Rights is a Special Report prepared by The Washington Times Advocacy Department.
The newspaper editorial is emblematic of press freedom and the right of free expression that are at the heart of our democracy. However, especially in light of the recent election, is the newspaper editorial another victim of the disruption that is upending journalism?
No cause was dearer to James Madison's heart than the cause of conscience. And no founder of our country was more responsible for what is now the world's boldest and most successful experiment in religious freedom, or liberty of conscience, for all.
Our First Amendment freedoms will work -- if we still have them around to use.
A central part of my work as executive director of The Constitutional Sources Project (ConSource) is educating American citizens about the United States Constitution.
A first for the Archives, this unified platform of public programming and outreach will engage every possible audience in the story of "Amending America," featuring digital, exhibition, educational and programmatic elements.
As the president of the public university named for the man who drafted the Bill of Rights and as a lawyer, I have often witnessed tensions as colleges and universities struggle to balance rights of free expression with equality of opportunity and freedom from discrimination. This balancing act is messy, complicated and emblematic of a struggle that James Madison and the other Founders addressed head-on: How do we ensure the rights of a diverse citizenry while maintaining conditions that would bind together an evolving population into a nation with a collective sense of civic purpose?
By the closing gavel of America's first Congress, a new representative government of the people had made the dreams of the Constitution's drafters real, enshrining the first rights of conscience, petition, privacy and the rule of law into a Bill of Rights.
I have been wondering what James Madison, the namesake of the James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation, would think about the 2016 presidential contest. Madison, commonly acknowledged as the Father of the Bill of Rights, did not shy away from political controversy, but even he may have been chagrined at the tone and tenor of our recent election.
Before James Madison was for the Bill of Rights, he was against it.
The First Amendment is first, not simply because it falls at the beginning of a list of amendments, but because it articulates the first freedom and the nature of that freedom. It guarantees the freedom essential to humans as rational beings.
Just up the mountain from where I sit at the UVA's Miller Center lies the final resting place of the university's founder, Thomas Jefferson.
"That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety."
"You are not to inquire how your trade may be increased, nor how you are to become a great and powerful people, but how your liberties can be secured; for liberty ought to be the direct end of your government."
The first words of the Bill of Rights are "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
For a century or more, judges, academics, politicians, news personalities and everyday Americans have debated just what the First Amendment's protection of freedom of speech means.
The Founders would not have been surprised that the Second Amendment "right of the people to keep and bear arms" survives.
Could you pick the Third Amendment out of a lineup? You might be forgiven for not recognizing it.
Historians don't know very much about 17th century London merchant Edward Bushel. He was neither prominent nor, as far as we know, unusual in other respects. Yet in 1670, with 11 other ordinary Londoners, he put his freedom and livelihood at stake rather than bow to lawless, menacing authority.
The history of constitutional interpretation is notorious for its occasional contortions of speech and logic. But in the case of the Ninth Amendment, history has been truly acrobatic. Whereas the original purpose of this amendment was to guard against expansions of federal power, its recent interpretations have tended (you guessed it) to expand federal authority.
The Constitution's 27th Amendment — sometimes known as the "Compensation" or "Rip Van Winkle" amendment -- reads: "No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened."
The first 10 Amendments to the United States Constitution, widely known as the American Bill of Rights, were adopted in 1791 under pressure from the Antifederalist opponents of the Constitution.
There has always been scant argument among constitutional scholars about which of the amendments in the Bill of Rights is most important. Most of course will answer that it is the First Amendment, guaranteeing freedom of speech, press, assembly, religion and petition for government redress of grievances.
In 2012, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg travelled to Egypt to tell an audience that they should not seek to model their own constitution after that of the United States.
