260 Origins of the Bill of Rights (Doing History 4)

Ben Franklin's World

How and why did Congress draft the First Ten Amendments to the Constitution?

In the United States, we use the Constitution and Bill of Rights to understand and define ourselves culturally. Americans are a people with laws and rights that are protected by the Constitution because they are defined in the Constitution. And the place where the Constitution defines and outlines our rights is within its First Ten Amendments, the Bill of Rights.

In this second episode of our 4th Doing History series, we’re investigating how and why Congress drafted the First Ten Amendments to the Constitution. Our guide for this investigation is Kenneth Bowling, a member of the First Federal Congress Project and a co-editor of A Documentary History of the First Federal Congress.

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/260

Sponsor Links

• Omohundro Institute

Production of this episode was made possible by a grant from the Roller-Bottimore Foundation of Richmond, Virginia.

Series Resources

• Joseph Adelman, "Articles of Amendment: Copying "The" Bill of Rights"
• Gautham Rao blog post: Friends in All the Right Places: The Newest Legal History
• Doing History 4 Legal Lexicon; or A Useful List of Terms You Might Not Know"
• "Doing History 4: Bibliography"

Complementary Episodes

• Episode 141: A Declaration in Draft
• Episode 143: Michael Klarman, The Making of the U nited States Constitution
• Episode 151: Defining the American Revolution
• Episode 179: George Van Cleve, Governance During the Critical Period
• Episode 202: The Early History of the United States Congress
• Episode 259: American Legal History & the Bill of Rights

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