Mary Sarah Bilder, Boston College Law School, has posted The Blessings of Liberty and Bills of Rights, which will appear in National Constitution Center’s essay collection, The Promise of America: Reflections On Our Enduring Ideals (Simon & Schuster, 2026):
With the final words of the Preamble, “We the People . . . ordain and establish this Constitution” to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Today, Americans might point to the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments of the US Constitution, as an important example of those liberties. Two hundred and fifty years ago, Americans also referred to the Bill of Rights, but they meant a 1689 English document. Over two centuries, the bill of rights transformed. This history underscores the continuity of a culture of rights and liberties as bulwarks against power. But it also reveals the conceptual challenges that arose as rights developed under a monarchical constitution were replaced with rights within a free constitution of the people.
--Dan Ernst
