Federalist 84, Civil Liberties, and the Bill of Rights

- Click here for the wiki.

This is the past of the principles written into the original constitution. It is also the subject of the first ten amendments to the document (later this semester we will look at another - equality - which was added when the 14th Amendment was ratified following the Civil War). The idea of a civil liberty - individual liberty, freedom from the coercion of the state - is that it is primarily about government, not so much the individual. As we will see, the language of the Bill of Rights focuses on what government cannot do either substantively or as a matter of process. The precise definition of these limits is a common subject of Supreme Court cases.

For previous posts on the subject:

- Bill of Rights.
- Civil Liberties.