by RNH Nello

Created on: March 09, 2009

The idea of an argument against' the United States Bill of Rights is not a new concept. It began before the convention creating the Constitution of the United States was adjourned and the proposed Constitution transmitted to the Continental Congress.

Prior to the end of this Convention it became clear that ratification of the newly proposed Constitution by the several States was no sure thing. It fact, without a Bill of Rights' it was highly unlikely that the nine States required to support ratification would be reached. Each State already had their own Constitution and many also had a Bill of Rights. In addition there was a history of a number of documents acting as, or containing similar content, to a Bill of Rights and these included such as, "Magna Carta [1215]; The Petition of Right [1628]; An Agreement of the Free People of England [1649]; The Bill of Rights [1689]; as well as others. In other words, such documents were an existing part of the heritage of the people.

Even so, no one made a better argument against the need for a Bill of Rights than Alexander Hamilton.
Primarily he did this during the Constitution ratification debates in the States in the newspapers of the State of New York most succinctly in what we have come to refer to as Federalist Paper 84. His argument is far grander than anything I could write, in short he makes the point that there is no such need due to the original intent of the Constitution and the way that the Constitution is structure. Its intent primarily being to create a federal general government which exist entirely within and is limited to, the Delegated Powers within the Constitution, basically referring to Article I, Section 8, Clauses 1 through 18. More over, he makes the point that to state (restate would be his point) in a Bill of Rights that the federal government is excluded from acts not delegated to it in the Constitution, would be to imply the existence of an unstated power that must be controlled. His point being that if someone could make such an argument, then someone could make the argument to use such an implied power. As is historically clear, Alexander Hamilton lost that debate.

It is interesting, however, to view the structure and intent of the ten ratified articles of the so call' Bill of Rights. Strictly speaking they are not a listing of rights, rather they are comprise of two type of articles, that is, the first eight being articles which exclude' the federal government from some specifically detailed

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