The Importance Of Constitutional Amendments In America

The Constitution and the Amendments are two very important documents that are needed in order to keep the people of America in order. The purpose of the Constitution is to, “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” (Constitution Preamble). The purpose of the Bill of Rights and the 17 Amendments, bringing the total to 27, are to protect the rights of the people of America and to prevent the government from having full control over the people.

The main purpose of the U.S. Constitution is to provide the basic rights of all citizens and provide direction how the government should work.The Constitution also provides the structure for law. and it has three branches; federal judiciary branch, legislative branch and executive branch.

In his book, “The Liberty Amendments” Mark Levin argues well on how the slow creep of federal power in the United States has slowly disenfranchised the local government under the guise of propagating and deifying a ‘national government approved’ form of democracy. The people received a message of nationalism, and personal power while at the same time receiving a watered down version of what the founding fathers had originally intended.

The framers of our Constitution knew that time has a way of changing countries and their citizens. Our country was in a whirlwind of change in 1789 as people were experiencing freedom from the tyranny of England for the first time in their lives. Our country was being molded and formed into a great nation by the founding fathers. Expectations and rules had to be set to protect the rights of the minorities and majorities. Amendments to the Constitution were written to ensure equality for all in changing times.

The fourteenth amendment has been and still is the most important amendment in the Constitution. It has been instrumental in improving the rights of citizens and has been used to litigate many landmark supreme court cases; it has been referred to in more court case than any other amendment. written into law on July 9, 1868, the fourteenth amendment grants citizenship to everyone born or naturalized in the United States. Furthermore, it bars states from denying any person life, liberty, or property, without due process of law or to deny to any person within its authority the equal protection of the law.

"Government surveillance of its citizen's internet activity has caused an uproar among the masses and has become the source of numerous protests. The government, the NSA in particular monitors a number of things on the internet including metadata, emails, instant messages, and social media posts. It may come as a surprise to people, but this activity is currently legal. Although it is legal, does it coincide with the first amendment right listed in the U.S Constitution? If a law is deemed unconstitutional, is it still legal? America fought for many years in order to gain its independence from Great Britain and made it clear to the entire world that we are The Home of the Free. America’s contradicting actions have some people questioning whether or not they are truly “free”.

Boom! That’s the sound of someone dying from a firearm. In fact, a death from a gun occurs every 15 minutes. The United States has a critical gun issue with over 30,000 firearm related deaths a year, the highest out of every First World country, and it needs a solution. The solution is repealing the second amendment. The second amendment should be repealed because it is unneeded in modern times, owning a gun should be a privilege not a right, and repealing the

Although all of the ten amendments in the Bill of Rights are important, two of the amendments that made a huge impact in United States history are the first and second amendments. These amendments not only shaped many events from 1790 - 1820, but continue to influence recent history, as well. The Bill of Rights was ratified December 15, 1791, with the first amendment giving us the freedom of speech, religion, and press, and the second amendment giving us the right to bear arms.

Amending the United States Constitution is no easy feat thanks to the Framers. They believed a Constitution should endure what Chief Justice Marshall would later call “a Constitution for the ages" (Finkelman). Members of Congress have proposed more than 10,000 amendments, but there have been only 17 amendments to the U.S. Constitution Since 1791. The difficulty in proposing amendments has not dampened politicians' desire to address issues they feel strongly about, such as flag burning and same-sex marriage.

John Paul Stevens’ book, Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution, advocates the concept of self-governance which, in his perspective, has been poorly compromised by recent Supreme Court rulings. At the age of ninety-four, Stevens criticizes these modern court opinions and advises that we push for amendments to overturn these misguided court decisions. The six subjects of controversy that Stevens has proposed remedies for are the anti commandeering rule, political gerrymandering, campaign finances, sovereign immunity, death penalty, and gun control. These claims are supported with both historical evidence as well as his own personal perspective on court rulings that he has participated in during his 35 years as a

The Amendment left open possibilities, that states could establish voter qualifications equally to all races. Many states took advantage of this position, establishing poll taxes and literacy tests among other qualifications, which were prohibited later with help of Voting Rights Act.

In the Bill of Rights, the fourth. Fifth, sixth, and eighth amendments are called the “rights of the accused.” These amendments are very successful in protecting the accused against the abuses of the federal government. The government in Great Britain at the time would convict people of crimes they didn't do and then try them in an unfair trial. The Framers of the Constitution did everything they could to keep this from happening. What they did three hundred years ago, is still working today.

To amend the constitution, various steps and procedures must be taken. When either Congress (which takes a two-thirds majority vote in both the Senate and the House of Representatives), or a constitutional convention (which takes two-thirds of the State legislatures) want to propose an amendment, they give it to the National Archives and Records Administration. The Congress proposes the amendment as a joint resolution to the National Archives and Records Administrations Office of the Federal Register for the publication process. The Office of the Federal Register adds legislative notes to the joint resolution and publishes it in slip law format. The Office of the Federal Register also puts together an information package for the States

This chapter first begins by discussing America's constitutional history within the role of the federal government. It explains how liberals have changed from the mainly classic liberals such as John Locke and Thomas Jefferson, to ones such as John Dewey and John Maynard Keynes. It also addresses how legislative power is delegated, including the role federal bureaucracy plays in this area. One issue that is brought up in the process of this is whether the practice of delegating legislative power is constitutional or not. Expanding on this is the issue of separation of powers, especially since Article 1 vests all legislative power in Congress. Continuing on with this same thought is the issue of delegating in the domestic context, because while

Discrimination is a violation of a person’s human rights (Thornberry & Estebanez 2002, 7-13; UDHR Preamble). To be clear, the violation of a person’s rights through discrimination is a violation of their human rights. International norms and legal standards are collectively agreed that all people are entitled to equal dignity and equal rights. Both the United Nations (UN) Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDNR) set clear standards of the fundamental freedoms that should be provided to every person. These rights include protection against discrimination by “race, sex, language, or religion” (Thornberry & Estebanez 2002, 12; UN Charter Article 1). Even in established democracies, a place many would be surprised to find, discrimination presents itself (Hunt 2015, 12-3). Why is discrimination so prevalent? Many countries see human rights as an international standard coming from outside their borders and therefore the state does not need to enforce them (Anker & Posner 1981-82; Hunt 2015). This coming from outside, dictated by international actors, is the lynch pin. Critics of these international norms and legal standards argue that since domestic policy makers had no role in determining these standards they should not be made responsible for implementing these rights protections (Anker & Posner 1981-82). Further, because