Discusses the twenty-six amendments to the United States Constitution, how each amendment was added, the people responsible such as George Mason, James Madison, and Carrie Chapman Catt, and also provides for classroom learning activties.

With a foreword by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court. An Engaging, Accessible Guide to the Bill of Rights for Everyday Citizens. In The Bill of Rights: A User's Guide, award-winning author and constitutional scholar Linda R. Monk explores the remarkable history of the Bill of Rights amendment by amendment, the Supreme Court's interpretation of each right, and the power of citizens to enforce those rights. Stories of the ordinary people who made the Bill of Rights come alive are featured throughout. These include Fannie Lou Hamer, a Mississippi sharecropper who became a national civil rights leader; Clarence Earl Gideon, a prisoner whose handwritten petition to the Supreme Court expanded the right to counsel; Mary Beth Tinker, a 13-year-old whose protest of the Vietnam War established free speech rights for students; Michael Hardwick, a bartender who fought for privacy after police entered his bedroom unlawfully; Suzette Kelo, a nurse who opposed the city's takeover of her working-class neighborhood; and Simon Tam, a millennial whose 10-year trademark battle for his band "The Slants" ended in a unanimous Supreme Court victory. Such people prove that, in the words of Judge Learned Hand, "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court, can save it." Exploring the history, scope, and meaning of the first ten amendments-as well as the Fourteenth Amendment, which nationalized them and extended new rights of equality to all-The Bill of Rights: A User's Guide is a powerful examination of the values that define American life and the tools that every citizen needs.

"It presents an alternative perspective on the end of Empire by focusing upon one aspect of constitutional decolonization and the importance of the local legal culture in determining each dependency's constitutional settlement, and provides a series of empirical case studies on the incorporation of human rights instruments into domestic constitutions when negotiated between a state and its dependencies. More generally this book highlights Britain's human rights legacy to its former Empire."--BOOK JACKET.

Americans have been claiming and defending rights since long before the nation achieved independence. But few Americans recognize how profoundly the nature of rights has changed over the past three hundred years. In The Nature of Rights at the American Founding and Beyond, Barry Alan Shain gathers together essays by some of the leading scholars in American constitutional law and history to examine the nature of rights claims in eighteenth-century America and how they differed, if at all, from today’s understandings. Was America at its founding predominantly individualistic or, in some important way, communal? Similarly, which understanding of rights was of greater centrality: the historical "rights of Englishmen" or abstract natural rights? And who enjoyed these rights, however understood? Everyone? Or only economically privileged and militarily responsible male heads of households? The contributors also consider how such concepts of rights have continued to shape and reshape the American experience of political liberty to this day. Beginning with the arresting transformation in the grounding of rights prompted by the American War of Independence, the volume moves through what the contributors describe as the "Founders’ Bill of Rights" to the "second" Bill of Rights that coincided with the Civil War, and ends with the language of rights erupting from the horrors of the Second World War and its aftermath in the Cold War. By asking what kind of nation the founding generation left us, or intended to leave us, the contributors are then able to compare that nation to the nation we have become. Most, if not all, of the essays demonstrate that the nature of rights in America has been anything but constant, and that the rights defended in the late eighteenth century stand at some distance from those celebrated today. Contributors:Akhil Reed Amar, Yale University * James H. Hutson, Library of Congress * Stephen Macedo, Princeton University * Richard Primus, University of Michigan * Jack N. Rakove, Stanford University * John Phillip Reid, New York University * Daniel T. Rodgers, Princeton University * A. Gregg Roeber, Pennsylvania State University * Barry Alan Shain, Colgate University * Rogers M. Smith, University of Pennsylvania * Leif Wenar, University of Sheffield * Gordon S. Wood, Brown University

Many Americans reference the Bill of Rights, a document that represents many of the freedoms that define the United States. Who doesn’t know about the First Amendment’s freedom of religion or Second Amendment’s right to bear arms? In this pocket-sized volume, Akhil Reed Amar and Les Adams offer a wealth of knowledge about the Bill of Rights that goes beyond a basic understanding. The Bill of Rights Primer is an authoritative guide to all American freedoms. Uncluttered and well-organized, this text is perfect for those who want to study up on the Bill of Rights without needing a law degree to do so. This elementary guidebook presents a short historical survey of the people, events, decrees, legislation, writings, and cultural milestones, in England and the American colonies, that influenced the Founding Fathers as they drafted the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. With helpful comments and fun facts in the margins, the book will provide a deeper understanding of the Bill of Rights, exhibiting that it is not a stagnant document but one with an evolving meaning shaped by historical events, such as the American Civil War and Reconstruction.

A history of the origins of the Bill of Rights. Leonard W. Levy offers a panoramic view of the liberties secured by the first ten amendments of the Constitution and illuminates the behind-the-scenes manoeuvrings, public rhetoric and political motivations of James Madison and others.