Essay Sample on The Bill of Rights: Protecting Human Rights in Constitutions

Introduction

The bill of rights is a collection of human rights listing all the humans' rights for people of a country. The bill of rights is enshrined in constitutions of countries to defend the rights of citizens living in the country. The bill of rights is meant to protect the rights of the people against infringement by other people and government officials (Douma, 2017). Some amendments have been made to the bill of rights leading to controversies among the people who have different opinions regarding the amendments. There are amendments to the bill of rights of the united states that were major to the American people.

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The first amendment was the amendment to the freedom of speech, the press, and religion and assembly right to petition the government. People are guaranteed freedom of speech by the bill of rights, but the speech must respect other people in terms of respecting the rights of other people (Douma, 2017). There is a difference between speech and the press. The amendment was meant to separate the speech given by people and communications done through the press. The amendment was also meant to protect religious groups from government influence where the government earlier had tried to influence religious groups denying the people their right to religion.

The first amendment touched on the rights of the people to assemble for whatever reason. There was a need to protect the right of the people to assemble without requiring permission from anybody, including the police, before they can be allowed to assemble (Douma, 2017). People had grievances on the interference by the government when they were meeting for different purposes. It's as if the government was insecure with public assembly; hence the amendment guaranteed the rights of the people to assemble.

The second significant amendment to the bill of rights entailed adding the bear arms in the bill of rights. Before the amendment, the people were not allowed to own arms, and the amendment gave the people the right to own guns as long as they are not connected to any militia (Douma, 2017). The right was added to the bill of rights to protect the people from militia attacks by enabling the people to fight the militia whenever they attacked the people. Various causes have been taken to the Supreme Court against the right to own arms, and the Supreme Court has upheld the right. There are concerns among some people that people are misusing the arms harming innocent people who are attacked using the arms.

The third major amendment of the bill of rights is the amendment to secure the homes of the people against any intrusion (Magliocca, 2018). The amendment was meant to protect the rights of the people to own property where soldiers used to take houses belonging to the people without the consent of the owners. People ended up losing their houses to soldiers who used to refuse to leave them. The military use to invade people's houses saying that they were conducting searches and ended up living in the houses without the consent of the owners. This led to the conflicts people the people and the police; the amendment sought to protect the people.

Plessy v. Ferguson

Plessy v. Ferguson is a legal case where the United States Supreme Court advanced the "separate but equal" doctrine. This case was ruled on May 18, 1896, where seven judges ruled in favor of the case, and the only one did not participate. This was the first significant inquiry on the 1868 fourteenth amendment's equal protection clause. The clause prevented the state from denying any person within their jurisdiction equal rights. The opinion of the majority gave sanction based on the Constitution to the laws that promoted racial discrimination. The case and emerged from an incident in 1892, where Plessy, an African American passenger refused to sit in a seat for the blacks and indicated that his rights were violated (Groves, 1951). It was however overturned in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ruled in 1954 in the Supreme Court.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was the Supreme Court case that overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling. The ruling was made on May 17, 1954, by the United States Supreme Court. The nine judges ruled unanimously that the racial segregation was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Before this ruling, there were public schools for the African Americans and the Whites, and although they were regarded as having equal provisions, they were discriminatory.

The Fourteenth Amendment restricted the states from denying protection to any individual with their respective jurisdiction. The ruling declared that the education facilities for the African Americans and the whites were unequal (Groves, 1951). The declaration, therefore, overturned Plessy v. Ferguson of separate but equal facilities and termed it inapplicable

Plessy v. Ferguson mandated different amenities for the African Americans and the whites as long as the facilities were equal. The Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ruling was on public schools but discouraged segregation in other public settings (Frazier, & Lewis, 2019). This ruling has been significant in fighting racial segregation and motivated civil rights movements that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s. African American students in elementary and high school had filed lawsuits after being denied admission in public schools for the whites. In Plessy, it had been ruled that the students who had filled cases of being denied access to all-white schools were not treated unequally because the schools they attended were comparably equal to those of the whites.

Significant social changes occurred in the 1950s and 60s through the civil rights movement to ensure that blacks get equal right (Douma, 2017). Although the Civil War abolished slavery, it did not end discrimination against the blacks, so they continued to suffer the effects of racism, especially in the South. Amendments were made to the Constitution to promote equality of the Africans Americans. One of the amendments was the fourteenth amendment which mandated the blacks to have equal rights. This amendment was made in 1868 and was followed by the 15th amendment of 1870. Blacks had their segregated seats in the buses, and if a white passenger missed a seat, they had to stand up. Individuals such as Park, however, failed to do so and led civil rights movements.

Conclusion

In conclusion, amendments to the Constitution played critical roles in the fight for equality. The first amendment entailed the freedom of speech while the second allowed people to own arms. Different rulings were made in favour of equal rights of African Americans. In Plessy v. Ferguson, for example, judges upheld the law that public schools could be segregated as long as the facilities were of the same quality.

Works Cited

Douma, M. J. (2017). How the First Ten Amendments Became the Bill of Rights. Geo. JL & Pub. Poly, 15, 593.Frazier, M. D., & Lewis, A. D. (2019). Court Cases Preceding Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. In Unsung Legacies of Educators and Events in African American Education (pp. 91-96). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Groves, H. E. (1951). Separate but equal--The doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson. Phylon (1940-1956), 12(1), 66-72.

Magliocca, G. N. (2018). The heart of the constitution: How the bill of rights became the bill of rights. Oxford University Press.