Law touches almost every aspect of our lives. It demonstrates what we as a society define as right and wrong and offers the best protection to individuals against major powers. I want to study law to gain an understanding of the laws which govern us, as well as to help people overcome inequality. Recently three MP’s were trying to use Article Nine of the Bill of Rights 1689 to privilege their expenses, consequently protecting them from prosecution. This abuse of power served to increase my interest in the overlay and contradictory nature of our laws.
revolting against their government. This era totally annihilated the thought of the divine right of kings, which was "the doctrine that kings and queens have a God given right to rule and that rebellion against them is a sin"(Dictionary.com). Some reasons for the end of the divine right of kings was the philosophers, the revolutions and the protestant reformation. The philosophers of the enlightenment were investigating the concept that all humans are free and equal, that they should have rights and should have a say in government. In addition, there were a number of documents that took a lot of power from the king . Also the revolutions of this ear were of great importance.
The Constitution of the United States was made through compromises that not everyone agreed on but they came to an agreement on what they thought it should be. Before all of the fifty states were founded there was not a Bill of Rights, it was not until the new government was up and running before the Bill of Rights was added. The reason for this was that the framers of the constitution did not realize that the Bill of Rights was necessary to have at the time. A certainly important choice that was made was how our government was to be
If I were a Supreme Court Justice during the 1800's, I would interpret that Congress intended to incorporate the Bill of Rights into privileges of national citizenship. The Bill of Rights gave citizens their civil rights and helped restrict the control of the federal government. It did not apply to states at first, but most of the State constitutions included parts of the Bill of Right and were not required to. The bill outlines multiple rights such as right to freedom of speech, religion practice along with many other issues addressed. The Bill of Rights became some of the initial documents that pronounced distinct things the Government cannot control regarding the rights of citizens. Majority of government documents leading up to the Bill
The Bill of Rights is the most important section of a document that has defined the American experience since 1788. Each of the ten amendments are important, of course, but there is always one out of a group that stands high above the others. Think of Les Miserables without Jean Valjean, or the American Revolution without George Washington, or 'The Federalist' without Alexander Hamilton. Not to say that the adventures of Javert and Les Amis de l'ABC wouldn't make a compelling story, or that Washington conducted the entire revolution on his own, or that Jay and Madison didn't make significant contributions to the eighty-five essays, but that there are individuals more important than the rest, individuals that leave a longer-lasting impression. No one is praising
1. In 1789, James Madison wrote the Bill of Rights, which lists specific constraints on federal control in a set of 10 amendments ratified by the states. Liberty, meaning freedom from governmental and economic control, was the central factor and of utmost importance in the eyes of Madison and his fellow founding fathers when drafting the Bill of Rights. Protecting the peoples’ respective personal liberties such as freedom of speech and the right to exercise particular religious beliefs played a vital role in the creation of these amendments however limits were also placed on the freedoms granted in order to preserve the nation’s wellbeing.
The bill of rights is a popular document that was not originally in the US constitution, but anti federalists wanted a bill of rights really bad because supposedly they were afraid of a strong central government. They did not want another king so some states refused the constitution until there was a bill of rights. Along with being afraid of a central government they wanted a limited government so that government could not control them. The anti federalists also thought the government would not protect their individual rights enough so they wanted a bill of rights.
The United States Constitution was recognized to Americans as a vague statement in clarifying the privileges and the rights of individuals and centralizing the power within the government itself. With the passing of the Bill of Rights and the first ten amendments, it grants the people to what is said to be their “natural rights” following additional rights that have significantly changed our society.
Horrigan, B, _Adventures in Law & Justice: exploring the big legal questions in Everyday Life_, Lawbook Company, Sydney, 2003
Parliamentary sovereignty, a core principle of the UK's constitution, essentially states that the Parliament is the ultimate legal authority, which possesses the power to create, modify or end any law. The judiciary cannot question its legislative competence, and a Parliament is not bound by former legislative provisions of earlier Parliaments. The ‘rule of law’ on the other hand, is a constitutional doctrine which primarily governs the operation of the legal system and the manner in which the powers of the state are exercised. However, since the Parliament is capable of making any law whatsoever, the concept of the rule of law poses a contradiction to the principle of parliamentary supremacy, entailing that Parliament is not bound by the
The rule of law is seen as being one of the most fundamental components of the UK constitution as well as being a principle that is concerned with restricting parliamentary action. Though the rule of law is seen to be a component in the constitution; the actual meaning of the rule of law has been very problematic to interpret. This is considerably down to the fact that it means different things to different people as since the nineteenth century, academics, politicians and judges have proposed diverse definitions and explanations in regards to the rule of law and the role it upholds in the UK constitution.
During the Constitutional Convention, the Federalists and Anti Federalists disagreed on many aspects of the Constitution.The Federalists wanted a strong central government while the Anti Federalists were more for state rights. That is just a small fraction of the many arguments that these two factions disagreed upon. The Constitution was eventually ratified with the Federalists compromising with the Anti Federalists by adding The Bill of Rights, a list of the general rights that a citizen was entitled to. Although the Bill of Rights gives us our inalienable rights, the government has compromised our rights to a significant extent many times in history due to fear, corruption, and control.
I am fascinated by the complexity of many legal issues and this has drawn me to consider law as a career. The documentary ‘Common’ for example opened my eyes to the controversy surrounding the law of joint enterprise. I particularly enjoy watching such documentaries and following current affairs and my interest in contemporary issues led me to take Law as one of my AS subjects. I live in a rural, agricultural area and land law is an area I would like to study further and having studied Sociology for GCSE, I am also particularly interested in family law.
Parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law are both concepts that are key to shaping the British constitution, however there is ambiguity as to which concept is the heart of the UK’s constitutional arrangement in the recent years.
An important provision of the Bill of Rights is the protection of freedom to publish, as provided by the First Amendment. This protection applies to all kinds of publications, even those that print unpopular opinions. In most censorship cases, every attempt is made to suppress the written word after publication, not before. Minnesota passed a law in 1925 that sought to prevent newspapers, magazines, and other publications from printing obscene, malicious, scandalous and defamatory material. This law was called the Minnesota Gag Law . This law allowed private citizens and/or public prosecutors to request a court injunction to shut down any publication that was known as a public nuisance. Publishers of newspapers had to show that they had good motives for anything they were going to print before they printed it.
The rule of law is a difficult concept to grasp and proves elusive to substantive definition. However, the following work considers the attempts of various social and legal theorists to define the concept and pertinent authorities are considered. Attitudes and emphasis as to the exact shape, form and content of the rule of law differ quite widely depending on the socio-political perspective and views of respective commentators (Slapper and Kelly, 2009, p16), although there are common themes that are almost universally adopted. The conclusions to this work endeavour to consolidate thinking on the rule of law in order to address the question posed in the title, which is at first sight a deceptively simple one.