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After the Constitution was ratified, the first Congress met in Federal Hall in New York City. Most of the delegates agreed that a Bill of Rights was needed and most of them believed that the same rights should be enumerated.
The idea of adding a bill of rights to the constitution was originally controversial. The idea was that the constitution, as written, did not specifically enumerate or protect the rights of the people, and as such needed an addition to ensure such protection. However, many Americans at the time opposed the bill of rights: If such a bill was created, many people feared that this would later be interpreted as a list of the only rights that people had. In other words, a list of rights would be the only rights one had, and if they were interpreted narrowly, the existence of such a bill of rights could effectively constrain the liberty of the people instead of ensuring it. For example, Alexander Hamilton opposed any such bill of rights, writing:
Supporters of the bill of rights argued that a list of rights would and should not be interpreted as exhaustive; i.e. that these rights were examples of important rights that people had, but that people had other rights as well. People in this school of thought were confident that the judiciary would interpret these rights in an expansive fashion.
The task of drafting the Bill of Rights fell to James Madison, who based his work on George Mason's earlier work, Virginia Declaration of Rights. It had been decided earlier that the Bill of Rights would be added to the Constitution as amendments (the list of rights was not included in the text of the Constitution because it was feared that changing the document's text would necessitate the rather painful process of re-ratifying the Constitution).
The Bill of Rights includes rights such as freedom of speech, of press, of religion, and of assembly. It also includes a clause assuring the American people that the Bill of Rights should not be interpreted as a comprehensive list of all rights belonging to Americans, but rather a list of the most important rights.
Twelve amendments were originally proposed in 1789, but two failed to pass at the same time as the remaining ten. These two amendments, originally numbered first and second, were drafted and submitted as:
Article the first ... After the first enumeration required by the first article of the Constitution, there shall be one Representative for every thirty thousand, until the number shall amount to one hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall be not less than one hundred Representatives, nor less than one Representative for every forty thousand persons, until the number of Representatives shall amount to two hundred; after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall not be less than two hundred Representatives, nor more than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons.
Article the second ... No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.
Several important public officials, including James Madison and United States Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, retained the confusing practice of referring to each of the ten amendments in the Bill of Rights by the enumeration found in the first draft.
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