Interpretations over Time
So who, exactly, was entitled to the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights? This was not addressed in the first 10 amendments, and succeeding generations would continue to redefine its answer.
Watch this video to see how interpretations of the Bill of Rights have changed over time.
NARRATOR: Interpretations of the Bill of Rights have changed over time. There was an unresolved ambiguity about whether these were the rights of individuals, groups of people, of nations--later, of corporations.
There were old grievances as well as new assertions about the scope of government. Does government have all the power except what is expressly granted to citizens, or do the people have all the power except what they grant to government?
But ultimately, the Bill of Rights is understood as a set of individual liberties of citizens. Then it took later amendments to the Constitution to expand the realm of who that was meant to apply to. It wasn't until the Fourteenth amendment, for example, that African Americans were included in the definition of citizen, and the Nineteenth amendment to include women, and later, Congress added Native Americans and Asian Americans to that definition of citizen.
So part of the story of the Bill of Rights over time is the addition of more amendments to the Constitution that changed the notion of who gets to enjoy the rights of citizens.
| Keyboard Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| Space | Pause/Play video playback |
| Enter | Pause/Play video playback |
| m | Mute/Unmute video volume |
| Up and Down arrows | Increase and decrease volume by 10% |
| Right and Left arrows | Seek forward or backward by 5 seconds |
| 0-9 | Fast seek to x% of the video. |
| f | Enter or exit fullscreen. (Note: To exit fullscreen in flash press the Esc key. |
| c | Press c to toggle captions on or off |
Take Notes
Describe at least one way in which the interpretation of the Bill of Rights has changed over time.
Calderwood Writing Course: U.S. History
