Which freedoms and rights are protected in the bill of rights

A few weeks before, Loving had been trapped by Commanche braves along the Pecos River. Shot in the arm and side, Loving managed to escape and reach Fort Unwilling to rest as a one-hit wonder when its first big hit, The Monkees, went off the air in , the television production company Screen Gems wasted no time in trying to repeat its success. On September 25, , in the p. Sign up now to learn about This Day in History straight from your inbox.

The wreckage of the planes fell into a populous neighborhood and did extensive damage on the ground. David Lee Boswell and his instructor, Martin The two men came to general agreement on a number of issues, but a U-2 spy plane incident in May crushed any hopes for further improvement of After aborting a poorly planned and ill-timed attack on the British-controlled city of Montreal, Continental Army Colonel Ethan Allen is captured by the British on September 25, After being identified as an officer of the Continental Amy, Allen was taken prisoner and sent Live TV.

This Day In History. Newspapers, books and pamphlets were also taxed. Even more than the taxes themselves, the Americans resented the fact that they were imposed by a distant government in which they were not represented.

And they were further enraged by the ways in which the Stamp Act was enforced. Armed with "writs of assistance" issued by Parliament, British customs inspectors entered people's homes even if they had no evidence of a Stamp Act violation, and ransacked the people's belongings in search of contraband.

The colonialists came to hate these "warrantless" searches and they became a rallying point for opposition to British rule. From these experiences came a uniquely American view of power and liberty as natural enemies.

The nation's founders believed that containing the government's power and protecting liberty was their most important task, and declared a new purpose for government: the protection of individual rights. The protection of rights was not the government's only purpose. It was still expected to protect the community against foreign and domestic threats, to ensure economic growth, and to conduct foreign affairs. It was not, however, the government's job to tell people how to live their lives, what religion to believe in, or what to write about in a pamphlet or newspaper.

In this sense, the idea of individual rights is the oldest and most traditional of American values. Democracy and liberty are often thought to be the same thing, but they are not. Democracy means that people ought to be able to vote for public officials in fair elections, and make most political decisions by majority rule.

Liberty , on the other hand, means that even in a democracy, individuals have rights that no majority should be able to take away. The rights that the Constitution's framers wanted to protect from government abuse were referred to in the Declaration of Independence as "unalienable rights. The entire Bill of Rights was created to protect rights the original citizens believed were naturally theirs, including:.

The Bill of Rights established soaring principles that guaranteed the most fundamental rights in very general terms. But from the beginning, real live cases arose that raised difficult questions about how, and even if, the Bill of Rights would be applied. Before the paper rights could become actual rights, someone had to interpret what the language of the Bill of Rights meant in specific situations.

Who would be the final arbiter of how the Constitution should be applied? At first, the answer was unclear. Thomas Jefferson thought that the federal judiciary should have that power; James Madison agreed that a system of independent courts would be "an impenetrable bulwark" of liberty.

But the Constitution did not make this explicit, and the issue would not be resolved until That year, for the first time, the U. Supreme Court struck down an act of Congress as unconstitutional in a case called Marbury v. Although the facts of this case were fairly mundane a dispute over the Secretary of State's refusal to commission four judges appointed by the Senate , the principle it established - that the Supreme Court had the power to nullify acts of Congress that violated the Constitution - turned out to be the key to the development and protection of most of the rights Americans enjoy today.

According to one eminent legal scholar, the independent judiciary was "America's most distinctive contribution to constitutionalism. The judicial branch of the new government was different from the legislative and executive branches in one very important respect: the courts did not have the power to initiate action by themselves. Congress could pass laws and the President could issue executive orders, but courts could not review these actions on their own initiative.

The Fifth Amendment provides several protections for people accused of crimes. It states that serious criminal charges must be started by a grand jury. A person cannot be tried twice for the same offense double jeopardy or have property taken away without just compensation.

People have the right against self-incrimination and cannot be imprisoned without due process of law fair procedures and trials. The Sixth Amendment provides additional protections to people accused of crimes, such as the right to a speedy and public trial, trial by an impartial jury in criminal cases, and to be informed of criminal charges.

Witnesses must face the accused, and the accused is allowed his or her own witnesses and to be represented by a lawyer. The Seventh Amendment extends the right to a jury trial in Federal civil cases. The Eighth Amendment bars excessive bail and fines and cruel and unusual punishment. The Ninth Amendment states that listing specific rights in the Constitution does not mean that people do not have other rights that have not been spelled out.

The Tenth Amendment says that the Federal Government only has those powers delegated in the Constitution.