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
says nothing about the actual form/function so implimented.
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