What is the Bill of Rights and why was it added to the U.S. Constitution?
The Bill of Rights is the title given to the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which became law on December 15, 1791. The Bill of Rights guarantees individual liberties. When the Constitution was ratified (approved) in 1788, there was some opposition to the document, mainly because it did not protect certain individual rights. Future U.S. president James Madison (1751–1836), then a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, led Congress in adopting the Bill of Rights. Most of the rights focus on individual liberties that had been cited in the Declaration of Independence (1776) as having been violated by the British. Most of these specific grievances had not been addressed by the Constitution; therefore, the Bill of Rights was added to correct this deficiency. The First Amendment, which is perhaps most…
