The Birth Of The Bill Of Rights. 1776-1791 [Paperback]

Robert Allen Rutland (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 254 pages
• Publisher: Northeastern; (Bicentennial Edition) edition (May 15, 1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555531121
• ISBN-13: 978-1555531126
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,255,350 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Valuable Supplement to Books about the Constitution, February 20, 2009

By 

Roger Berlind (NY, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Birth of the Bill of Rights 1776-1791 (Paperback)

While there are many books about the origins of the U.S. Constitution, there are very few about the origins of the Bill of Rights which was established by the new federal government as the first 10 amendments to the Constitution between 1789 and 1791.

This excellent book by historian Robert Allen Rutland (editor of the papers of James Madison) is currently out of print. That is unfortunate since his book (first published in 1955) might still be the best book aimed at ordinary readers who just want to understand how the Bill of Rights evolved and why it was not actually included in the original Constitution. There are other more recent books on the subject by Akhil Reed Amar (2000) and Leonard W. Levy (2001), but these books tackle the amendments individually and appear to be aimed at law students and constitutional lawyers; they also seemed focused on trying to divine the original meanings of the Bill of Rights in light of current arguments about their interpretations. Rutland, in contrast, focuses primarily on the origins of the bill of rights and the process by which they were created without trying to evaluate the amendments in connection with current affairs (or 1955 affairs).

There is a new book by Richard Labunski called "James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights" (2006) that seems more aligned with Rutland's book, but Labunksi starts his narrative with the Constitutional Convention. In contrast, Rutland traces the origins of the Bill of Rights back to English precedents and the various bills of rights that were created by individual states starting with Virginia in 1776. This is the strength of Rutland's book since he very clearly illustrates the evolution of our civil liberties and why some of the Antifederalists were upset that the Constitution did not contain the same guarantees of liberty that the states had all formulated by 1787. His chapters on the Constitutional Convention and the struggle to ratify the Constitution are very interesting and pointed out facts that other books I've read about the Constitution left out. For instance, religious minorities such as the Baptists generally opposed the new Constitution because they worried that it did not guarantee their freedom of religion.

In his final chapter, Rutland does briefly discuss both expansions and violations of the Bill of Rights between 1791 and 1955. While Rutland focused on violations of civil liberties committed against Japanese Americans during World War II and suspected communists in the 1950s, the lesson that the preservation of our liberties requires constant vigilance is just as relevant today as it was 50 years ago.