“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” So
wrote Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence in 1776, but his
conception of equality was vastly different from our own. Still, the Founding
Fathers fought to create a free and equal society, in which Americans were free from
religious persecution and other restrictions on their individual liberties. The
civil rights movement, which began in earnest in the 1950s, was born when African
Americans demanded that they be given equal protection under the law. Their
demonstrations set the stage for other groups to begin agitating for new laws as
well.
Today, we take such freedoms as the right to privacy and freedom of speech for
granted. But our civil liberties and rights are the result of many years of
agitation and activism. Plus, our conceptions of civil rights and liberties have
evolved since Jefferson’s day. Recent events such as the debate over gay marriage
and the war on terror ensure that our conceptions of liberty and equal rights will
continue to evolve in the years to come.
The Bill of Rights
Civil liberties protect us from government power. They are rooted
in the Bill of Rights, which limits the powers of the federal
government. The government cannot take away the freedoms outlined in the Bill of
Rights, and any action that encroaches on these liberties is illegal.
LIMITS AND THE BILL OF RIGHTS
|
Amendment
|
Right(s) Granted
|
| 1st | Freedoms of speech, press, assembly, petition, and religion
|
| 2nd, 3rd, 4th | Right to bear arms, protection from having troops inside
one’s home, protection from unreasonable search and seizure
|
| 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th | Due process, right to trial by jury, protection from cruel
and unusual punishment |
| 9th, 10th | Those rights not enumerated by the Bill of Rights
|
The States
The Bill of Rights applies mostly to the federal government, so citizens were
not protected from the states’ encroaching on their civil liberties. The Fourteenth
Amendment, ratified in 1868, protects citizens against state infringements of the
rights and liberties guaranteed in the Constitution. In the early part of the
twentieth century, courts began the practice of incorporation,
enforcing the Fourteenth Amendment by forcing state governments to abide by the Bill
of Rights. To do so, courts urged selective incorporation by asking the
states to incorporate select parts of the Bill of Rights rather than all ten
amendments. By 1969, however, the entire Bill of Rights had been incorporated by the
Supreme Court.
