Understanding the U.S. Bill of Rights

The Bill of Rights: Protecting Individual Freedoms

After the leaders of the new United States wrote the Constitution, they had to get the thirteen states to agree to it. Some of the states did not want to agree unless they could add some specific rights for individual people. So, in 1791, the United States added ten new rights to the Constitution. These are called the Bill of Rights. Here are the ten rights included in the Bill of Rights:

The Ten Amendments Explained

1. First Amendment: Freedoms of Expression

   Congress cannot make any law about your religion, or stop you from practicing your religion, or keep you from saying whatever you want, or publishing whatever you want (like in a newspaper or a book). And Congress cannot stop you from meeting peacefully for a demonstration to ask the government to change something.

2. Second Amendment: Right to Bear Arms

   Congress cannot stop people from having and carrying weapons, because we need to be able to defend ourselves.

3. Third Amendment: Quartering of Soldiers

   You do not have to let soldiers live in your house, except if there is a war, and even then only if Congress has passed a law about it.

4. Fourth Amendment: Search and Seizure Protection

   Nobody can search your body, or your house, or your papers and things, unless they can prove to a judge that they have a good reason to think you have committed a crime.

5. Fifth Amendment: Due Process and Self-Incrimination

   You cannot be tried for any serious crime without a Grand Jury meeting first to decide whether there is enough evidence for a trial. And if the jury decides you are innocent, the government cannot try again with another jury. You do not have to say anything at your trial. You cannot be killed, or put in jail, or fined, unless you were convicted of a crime by a jury. And the government cannot take your house or your farm or anything that is yours, unless the government pays for it.

6. Sixth Amendment: Speedy Trial and Legal Counsel

   If you are arrested, you have a right to have your trial pretty soon, and the government cannot keep you in jail without trying you. The trial has to be public, so everyone knows what is happening. The case has to be decided by a jury of ordinary people from your area. You have the right to know what you are accused of, to see and hear the people who are witnesses against you, to have the government help you get witnesses on your side, and you have the right to a lawyer to help you.

7. Seventh Amendment: Jury Trial in Civil Cases

   You also have the right to a jury when it is a civil case (a law case between two people rather than between you and the government).

8. Eighth Amendment: No Excessive Bail or Cruel Punishments

   The government cannot make you pay more than is reasonable in bail or in fines, and the government cannot order you to have cruel or unusual punishments (like torture) even if you are convicted of a crime.

9. Ninth Amendment: Unenumerated Rights

   Just because these rights are listed in the Constitution does not mean that you do not have other rights too.

10. Tenth Amendment: Powers Reserved to States

    Anything that the Constitution does not say that Congress can do should be left up to the states, or to the people.

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