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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: nihil who wrote (41708)	6/24/1999 4:21:00 PM
From: jbe	Respond to of 108807

Aha, but in 1789 the House DID vote in favor of Madison's amendment! It would have been the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, and it read as follows: No State shall infringe the right of trial by Jury in criminal cases, nor the rights of conscience, nor the freedom of speech, or of the press. Madison proposed the amendment, but he was no "extremist" on the issue, or the House would not have passed it. It was jettisoned by the Senate (a very different bunch of men from the one that sat in the Constitutional Convention). This goes far towards answering my question "why," which I posed as follows: Now, I am no constitutional scholar, but it sounds to me as if there was some debate from the outset over the question of whether the Bill of Rights did and/or should apply to the states. After all, common sense forces one to ask: what good is a guarantee of rights in the federal Constitution if those rights can be violated with impunity on the state level? After all, I live in a particular state. And if I want to open up a Buddhist temple, say, and the state I live in restricts Buddhism, then the "free exercise" clause in the federal constitution is of no practical use to me whatsoever -- unless the Bill of Rights was meant to apply to the states as well as to the federal government. Message 10250183 And, of course, this occurred to Madison as well (from June 8, 1789 session): The State Governments are as liable to attack the invaluable privileges as the General Government is, and therefore ought to be as cautiously guarded against....I think there is more danger of those powers being abused by the State Governments than by the Government of the United States. The same may be said of other powers which they possess, if not controlled by the general principle, that laws are unconstitutional which infringe the rights of the community. And from the August 17, 1789 debate: Mr. TUCKER this is offered, I presume, as an amendment to the constitution of the United States, but it goes only to the alteration of constitutions of particular states. It will be much better, I apprehend, to leave the state governments to themselves, and not to interfere with them more than we already do; and that is thought by many to be rather too much. I therefore move, Sir, to strike out these words. Mr. MADISON conceives this to be the most valuable amendment in the whole list. If there were any reason to restrain the government of the United States from infringing upon these essential rights, it was equally necessary that they should be secured against the state governments. He thought that if they provided against one, it was as necessary to provide against the other, and it was satisfied that it would be equally grateful to the people. Mr. LIVERMORE had no great objection to the sentiment, but he thought it not well expressed. He wished to make it an affirmative proposition; 'the equal rights of conscience, the freedom of speech or of the press, and the right of trial by jury in criminal cases, shall not be infringed by any state.' This transposition being agreed to, and Mr. TUCKER'S motion being rejected, the clause was adopted.(6) (In the final wording of the amendments that was sent to the Senate the transposition had not taken place. No reason for that mistake is recorded.) members.tripod.com