Origins of the Bill of Rights / by Leonard William Levy.

New Haven, CT : Yale University Press, 1999.

20765

Constitutional history -- United States.

Civil rights -- United States.

Constitutional law.

1. Why we have the Bill of Rights

2. Habeas corpus

3. Bills of attainder

4. The first amendment: the establishment clause

5. The first amendment: the free press clause

6. The right to bear arms

7. The fourth amendment: search and seizure

8. The fifth amendment: the right against self-incrimination

9. Double jeopardy

10. The double jury system: grand and petty

11. The eighth amendment

12. The ninth amendment: unenumerated rights

Appendix.

Americans resorted to arms in 1775 not to establish new liberties but to defend old ones, explains constitutional historian Leonard W. Levy in this history of the origins of the Bill of Rights. Unencumbered by a rigid class system, an arbitrary government, or a single established church squelching dissent, colonial Americans understood freedom in a far more comprehensive and liberal way than the English. He offers here a panoramic view of the liberties secured by the first ten amendments to the Constitution - a penetrating analysis of the background of the Bill of Rights and of current legal understandings of each of its provisions.

Includes bibliography and index.

0300078021

xii, 306 p.