Saturday, December 9, 2017

How did Anti-Federalist concerns lead to the creation of the Bill of Rights?

Among the many concerns raised by the Anti-Federalists about the new Constitution was the fact that it lacked a bill of rights. Many state constitutions had included a list of rights, and the Anti-Federalists argued that a Bill of Rights would serve as a sort of "paper barrier" to infringement on the rights of the people. Additionally, many Anties saw a Bill of Rights as a means of restraining the powers of the new federal government by reserving some powers to the states and placing limits on the powers of Congress. As ratification was debated in many of the state conventions, some opponents of the Constitution demanded extensive changes before they would agree to ratify it. While Federalists were unwilling to accept conditional ratification in a quid pro quo sense, they did agree informally in many conventions that a Bill of Rights would be added if the document was ratified. North Carolina flatly refused to ratify the document without a Bill of Rights, choosing to vote to neither ratify nor reject it at the first of two ratification conventions. So once ratification was secured, a Bill of Rights was indeed added, with James Madison as its primary author. Ten of seventeen amendments approved in Congress became the Bill of Rights, and many of the fears registered by Anti-Federalists during the ratification debates were addressed in the amendments. Especially important to many Anti-Federalists was the Tenth Amendment, which reserved to the states all powers not delegated to the United States government.
https://billofrightsinstitute.org/founding-documents/bill-of-rights/

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