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All that may be true, but as dalek_cannes says, it gives us perspective on how to understand the Constitution. In particular, it informs us that the Bill of Rig
by CWuestefeld 13y ago
All that may be true, but as dalek_cannes says, it gives us perspective on how to understand the Constitution. In particular, it informs us that the Bill of Rights is not granting rights to the people, but is instead taking note of certain rights that all people have inherently.
- rayiner 13y agoI don't think it informs us of that at all. Even to the extent that it's anything more than rhetorical flourish, it's misleading to read the language in terms of modern understandings or schoolhouse revisionist history. At the time, there was this idea of the "customary rights of Englishmen" that isn't coextensive with "natural rights of all human beings" as we might think of it today. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_of_Englishmen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_of_Englishmen. These are not "natural rights" in the sense of something you might find if you cut someone open and did an autopsy, but rather rights that arose out of the long-standing, practice of a people and which are enjoyed by those people. It's quite clear that the Constitution simply recognized customary rights that existed, but that shouldn't be taken as a recognition of universal rights common to all people. Especially in light of all the countervailing evidence in the form of unequal treatment of nearly everyone who wasn't a white English male landowner. That evidence is inconsistent with the recognition of universal natural rights, but entirely consistent with the recognition of customary rights, which since the magna carta had applied to white English male landowners.