American Dialogue: The Founders and Us

by Joseph J. Ellis

As Madison worked through the possible candidates for inclusion, he tended to prefer the standard set of rights already enshrined in the state constitutions. The major ones included the right of free speech, a free press, freedom of religion, freedom from unwarranted searches and seizures, the right to a jury trial within a reasonable period of time, and the explicit presumption—declared in the Articles—that powers not delegated to the federal government were reserved for the states. As a result, the Madison list represented a codification of rights based on the previous thirty years of American history, most especially the lessons learned in opposing the policies of the British ministry in the run-up to the Declaration of Independence. What has come to be regarded as a set of timeless truths was, in fact, a distillation of the political experience of the revolutionary generation.