What is the Bill of Rights?

The Bill of Rights comprises the first ten amendments, ratified together in December 1791. The First protects religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition. The Second addresses arms and militia. The Third restricts quartering soldiers. The Fourth protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. The Fifth covers grand jury indictment, double jeopardy, self-incrimination, due process, and takings. The Sixth guarantees criminal trial rights including speedy public trial, jury, confrontation, and counsel. The Seventh preserves civil jury trials. The Eighth prohibits excessive bail and fines and cruel and unusual punishment. The Ninth states that listing rights does not deny others retained by the people. The Tenth reserves undelegated powers to the states and the people.

They exist because of a ratification fight. Federalists initially argued a bill of rights was unnecessary and even dangerous, since enumerating rights might imply that unlisted ones did not exist, which is precisely what the Ninth Amendment was written to address. Anti-Federalists insisted, several states ratified the Constitution conditionally on the understanding that amendments would follow, and James Madison drafted and shepherded them through the First Congress. Twelve were sent to the states; ten were ratified then, one much later became the Twenty-seventh Amendment in 1992, and one was never ratified.

One structural point is frequently missed. As originally understood and as held in Barron v. Baltimore in 1833, the Bill of Rights restrained only the federal government, not the states. Most of its protections were applied against the states gradually through the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause across the twentieth century, a process called incorporation, and it happened right by right rather than all at once, with the Second Amendment not incorporated until 2010. That is why the practical reach of these guarantees against state and local government is a relatively modern development.