Abatis
Platinum Member
1st amendment
Near v. Minnesota, 1931 “The liberty of the press … is safeguarded from invasion by state action.”
Although the First Amendment ensures a free press, until this case, it only protected the press from federal laws, not state laws. Minnesota shut down J. M. Near’s Saturday Press for publishing vicious antisemitic and racist remarks. In what is regarded as the landmark free press decision, the Court ruled that a state cannot engage in “prior restraint”; that is, with rare exceptions, it cannot stop a person from publishing or expressing a thought.
5th amendment
Miranda v. Arizona, 1966 “You have the right to remain silent …” After police questioning, Ernesto Miranda confessed to kidnapping and raping a woman. The Court struck down his conviction, on grounds that he was not informed of his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination. Hereafter, the Miranda warnings have been a standard feature of arrest procedures.
6TH amendment
Gideon v. Wainwright, 1963 Defendants in criminal cases have an absolute right to counsel.
Too poor to afford a lawyer, Clarence Earl Gideon was convicted for breaking into a poolroom—a felony crime in Florida. He appealed to the Supreme Court, which ruled that the government must provide free counsel to accused criminals who cannot pay for it themselves. At first, the ruling applied to felonies only. It was later extended to cover any cases where the penalty was six months imprisonment or longer.
Those cases were applying the rights recognized and secured in the Bill of Rights on the states Those cases were "incorporating" those rights under the 14th Amendment which was deemed necessary to force states to respect the rights as secured in the federal constitution. Previous civil rights protections enacted by Congress (i.e., Civil Rights Act of 1866) were ineffective in forcing states to respect rights of Freemen, which forced making Freemen full US citizens and holding the states powerless to act against their rights.
The 14th AMENDMENT altered the relationship between the federal and state governments that the original Constitution established.
A new AMENDMENT was required to do those actions in law you note above.
WTF?
Who were the authors, that gave people god-given "rights"?
LOL. You have proven you can't understand law, now you want to dip your toe into philosophy???? Think of the great philosophers from The Enlightenment Period / The Age of Reason.
If these rights were "god-given" why didn't colonists have these "rights' before the constitution was written?
They did, that was the point. That the people possessed those rights but the English crown was authoritarian and not established upon the free association and decisions of the people, the Crown's government was deemed (in the Lockean sense) illegitimate and thus subject to the people throwing it off (and they were duty-bound to do just that).
The government, claims they are "god-given", so why don't other countries have these rights?
Because those governments are not predicated, established upon those principles (all power originates in the people, they freely choose the government. which is established to protect those inherent rights an only governs with their consent). Just because a nation's people are willing to suffer the insults of tyranny doesn't mean it isn't tyranny.
Those fundamental principles (conferred powers and retained rights) means "We the People of the United States . . . do ordain and establish" government but we retain everything not conferred . . . (again, see 9th and 10th Amendments).
Try to comprehend that "unalienable rights" is an utterly meaningless concept if there isn't a government being established, to NOT surrender rights to.
Huh?
So, the states already had all these rights before 1789?
The states didn't "have" the rights; the principle of pre-existing rights is even more evident in the state constitutions . . . Just read one; the rights of the citizen are called out, excepted out in Article I, before any powers are set-out.
The wording / construction of the provisions in the federal Bill of Rights flows from proposed amendments that came from the states who (along with anti-Federalists) demanded the citizen's rights that the states recognized, were secured against federal action.
The Federalists argued against adding a bill of rights. They argued that since the powers of the government were so exactingly set-out, no power was ever granted to act against those rights so they were safe.
The Federalists argued any attempt to list rights (which were considered everything not in the Constitution) was an absurd attempt to list what was uncountable. The list was believed dangerous as well, because in the future, someone might think those were the ONLY rights the people possessed, and everything else was thrown into the hands of the government. The 9th and 10th Amendments stand as the codification of Federalist arguments against the Bill of Rights, written as rules of interpretation.
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