In a message dated 6/10/01 12:33:58 AM Eastern Daylight Time, ravage@einstein.ssz.com writes:
The Bill of Rights actlly grants no rights, it only limits what the government may do with respect to defining/restricting them. See 9'th and 10'th. It in effect sets out a list of prohibitions of things that can't/shouldn't be done. I challenge you to uafind a single 'assignment' sentence in the first 10 amendments.
With respect to the laws of the states, the Constitution only(!) stipulates that the federals must guarantee them to be representative. It
Sorry, poor choice of language on my part. True, the bill of rights doesn't actually *assign* rights- it prohibits the federal government from making any laws that restrict them. Reading from amendments 1-10, and the othe articles of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights doesn't apply to the states- and this was legal fact until the passage of the 14th amendment. But that 14th stated that (paraphrasing here) "no state may deny a citizen due process of law". The Supreme Court interpreted this (in effect, adding foot notes to the constitution) to mean that the Bill of Rights now applied to the states. I know that nowhere in the Constitution does it say that "states must honour the bill of rights". But look in Supreme Court decisions (which, legally, are pretty much an extension of the constitution). There, it is *clearly* stated that the Bill of Right's restrictions of the federal government's powers applies to the states as well. So when you say that the Constitution only says that states laws must be representative, you are ignoring the 14th amendment, and what it does to the relationthip between state governments and their citizens. But yeah, that's all I'm trying to say. Enough is enough. Ender