Okay, since Gordon Brown has chosen today to announce that he wants to draw up a Bill of Rights for Great Britain (why announce it today?), this has made me wonder about our own Bill of Rights and Constitution. What do you think is the most important feature of the American Bill of Rights? You don't have to be American to answer this question, since we all are people, afterall (and it is likely that you are more aware of what the American Bill of Rights says if you aren't American).
Oh, and one more thing, I thought that Great Britain already had a Bill of Rights .. was I mistaken??
Okay, back to the original question; which Amendment do you think is most important? (my opinion .. below the fold) ...
The amendment that I think is most important is (predictably) the First Amendment;
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
If I was ever insane enough to go to law school (I have flirted with the idea several times), I would specialize in First Amendment Law.
I think the First Amendment is the cornerstone of what it is to be American.
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I don't know, Grrl - it's not in the Bill of Rights, but I have to say that just about now my fave is the 22nd.
The UK does not have a written constitution, much less its own Bill of Rights. It does have the Human Rights Act (HRT), which incorporates the European Convention on Human Rights, which is arguably as close as the UK comes to a Bill of Rights (in the modern sense). That is not popular with some British politicians; e.g., the Tories (the Conservative Party) want to scrap HRT. (Why, and what, if anything, would replace it are unknown to me.)
Brown's proposal is for a discussion about having a written constitution, and/or a Bill of Rights and Duties. At the present time, "[s]ome of the ideas, such as a British bill of rights and a British constitution, are very much at the formative stage: what he described as a route map, not a final blueprint" (from The Guardian's summary of Brown's proposals, PM offers to hand power to the people in constitution debate).
The so-called English Bill of Rights (see the Wikipedia article) is, broadly, about how power is shared/divided between Parliament (supposedly representing the subjects and residents), the royals, and the feudal barons. It differs in tone from the US Bill of Rights, which is (broadly) limits on what the government can do. In the UK, there is an idea called "sovereignty of Parliament" which means, as an example, that they can, as the representative of the people, abolish free speech. That cannot happen (as theoretically easily) in the USA. (I understand that the UK is one of the few countries which still has the idea of parliamentary sovereignty; others, including the USA, think there should be limits and/or review (such as the ability to declare an act unconstitutional).)
I am neither a lawyer nor an expert on constitutional law, so the above probably contains mistakes of fact and interpretation. Corrections are most welcome!
Except for the "establishment of religion" part everything else is shared by many other Western industrialized nations (e.g. freedom of speech, freedom of the press, limited right to assemble). Is it the fact that there's no established religion in the USA what you are referring to when you say, "I think the First Amendment is the cornerstone of what it is to be American."?
when America was first formed, there were many things that people did not have the freedom to engage in; freedom of religion was only one of these things. basically, freedom of thought was what our founding fathers sought to obtain, not freedom of religion (otherwise, there would not have been so many atheists among their number). and that is what i think is the cornerstone of what it is to be American -- the capacity to engage in critical thinking without government censure.
It's been argued that the due process rights guaranteed by the 5th and 14th amendments probably could be interpreted to include all of the other rights in the Bill of Rights. Madison, in proposing the 5th amendment, argued "Although I know whenever the great rights, the trial by jury, freedom of the press, or liberty of conscience, come in question in [Parliament], the invasion of them is resisted by able advocates, yet their Magna Charta does not contain any one provision for the security of those rights, respecting which the people of America are most alarmed."
Without substantive due process, the other amendments become difficult to enforce.
Don't take this the wrong way, but I think one distinguishing feature - and perhaps the one that more than any other has prevented other countries from reusing the idea - is that it is short. Way too short. Most other countries' foundational or constitutional laws are, like all legal documents, rather longwinded and boring. The Swedish "Regeringsformen" which details how the country is run, and also contains the other constitutional laws in briefs is probably on the order of 20 pages or so (and when you add the other parts, about free speech and freedom of the press for instance, that are only condensed in this one, perhaps 40-50 pages). And that is still reasonably short by many countries' standards.
The reason they are somewhat long is the same reason most laws and legal documents are somewhat long - you want to make sure you're really covering the issues you want to cover - but not issues outside, that it will be interpreted the way you intended, and that it not leave loopholes or omissions for people to abuse. To put it another way, a longwinded, legalistic document leaves more of the power to make the law into the hands of the people that actually wrote and ratified it, not in the hands of later courts to interpret as they see fit. Most of the constitutional infighting that seems to be constantly going on won't happen in Sweden (as the particular example I know well), since the legal wiggle-room that partisans on all sides rely on in the US just isn't there.
Or, one last way to put it: It is a beautiful document as a statement of intent. It's a shame it wasn't backed up by a second, fuller legal document that spells out all the corner cases.
In the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland; the northern bit of Great Britain has different laws to the rest. Though the differences have been eroded over time; the concept of natural justice exists in Scottish law but doesn't appear to exist in English/Irish law and even the legality of marriage is different as the concept of a common law marriage exists.
As for a Bill of Rights, well in the UK we have law & precedent joined with a sovereign parliament, worked so far (if it isn't broken why try to fix it? I'm not saying it is perfect but I can't see todays politicians improving it).
When I hear Broon say it is just a road map I tend not to believe him (I tend not to believe politicans by default) given the track record to date of "the listening labour goverment".
The other problem with writing a constitution nowadays is it'll end up being a thousand page single space document of legal waffle trying to please everyone (see EU constitution for an example) and covering every eventuality. The beauty of the USAs Bill of Rights & Constitution is its brevity and simplicity.
On the Rights; V, VI & VII seem very important to me. We had these historically in the UK and when I see them being eroded with Home Secretaries saying juries aren't intelligent enough to understand some cases I get worried.
Jury trial is one of the defenders against unjust law, juries can and have ignored the law and have asserted what they thought was justice in a number of cases (some I agreed with some I didn't). I guess this is why some people wish to do away with jury trial as a right; more interested in people obeying the law and enforcing their will (even if the law is unjust, vindictive and down right evil) rather than having a just society.
It isn't soley the job of a jury to decide the case and return a verdict based on the law; at least it hasn't been in the UK since at least the 1800s.
Athiests? Who? There were Deists (e.g., Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Payne, Allen, arguably Franklin), Unitarians (e.g., Adams), and there were Cristians who opposed theocracy (e.g., Isaac Backus, John Leland), but atheists were still pretty much shat upon at that point.
I don't think I've ever heard the term 'atheist' applied to the founders outside of the extreme lunatic-fringe religious right.
That said, first amendment. The order in which they were ratified is a pretty fair measure of their importance.
How about one that the Framers found important enough that they didn't wait for a Bill of Rights:
Article I, section 9, second paragraph:
The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.