CONSTITUTIONAL MYTHS & REALITIES - Eight of 'em, so pay attention! - Part II

This is part two in an eight part series adapted from a speech delivered on April 29, 2003, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Dearborn, Michigan. Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, the national speech digest of Hillsdale College. [Part I is here]

Myth or Misconception 2: The Constitution principally upholds individual rights and liberties through the guarantees of the Bill of Rights.

It is not to denigrate the importance of the Bill of Rights to suggest that the Founders intended that individual rights and liberties would principally be protected by the architecture of the Constitution—the structure of government set forth in its original seven articles. The great animating principles of our Constitution are in evidence everywhere within this architecture. First, there is federalism, in which the powers of government are divided between the national government and the states. To the former belong such powers as those relating to foreign policy and national defense; to the latter such powers as those relating to the criminal justice system and the protection of the family. Second, there is the separation of powers, in which each branch of the national government—the legislative, the executive, and the judicial branch—has distinct responsibilities, yet is subject to the checks and balances of the other branches. Third, there is the principle of limited government of a particular sort in which the national government is constrained to exercise only those powers set forth by the Constitution, for example, issuing currency, administering immigration laws, running the post office and waging war. Together, these principles make it more difficult for government to exercise power and to abuse minority rights, and they limit the impact of governmental abuses of power.

Many of the Founders, including James Madison, believed that a Bill of Rights was unnecessary because the Constitution's architecture itself was sufficient to ensure that national power would not be abused. As Alexander Hamilton remarked in Federalist 84, "the Constitution is itself, in every rational sense, and to every useful purpose, a Bill of Rights." And practically speaking, until 1925, the Bill of Rights was not even thought to apply to the states, only to Congress; yet the individual rights of our citizens remained generally well protected.