1791: The Bill of Rights, then & now: the first 10 amendments to the Constitution are still sparking debate 220 years after they were ratified.

• Author: Majerol, Veronica
• Position: TIMES PAST

A cross the Middle East this year throngs of people took to the streets in the hope of replacing their autocratic governments with more-democratic ones.

Tunisia and Egypt are now in the throes of transition after ousting their leaders early this year. And much like a nation that threw off the shackles of tyranny more than two centuries ago, they've begun drafting new constitutions and at least discussing provisions to protect fundamental liberties, like freedom of speech, worship, political expression, and a right to due process of law.

Those freedoms should sound familiar to anyone who's read the first 10 amendments to the United States Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights. Ratified 220 years ago, it continues to serve as one of the foundations of American democracy, and an inspiration to many around the world.

A Newborn Nation

"There is no document in the history of the United States more critical to the protection of the rights of American citizens than the Bill of Rights," says Andrew Cayton, a professor of history at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

But despite the example it still provides to budding democracies around the world, the Bill of Rights has long stirred debate. Indeed, the question of whether a Bill of Rights was even necessary sharply divided the Founding Fathers. Today, it still has Americans debating--not only about what the Framers really meant but also about how the Supreme Court should interpret the document in the modern world.

After America won its independence from Great Britain in the Revolutionary War (1775-83), delegates from 12 of the 13 states * at the 1787 Constitutional Convention fiercely debated what kind of government should be established. On the one hand, they understood that the Articles of Confederation, which had created a weak government, needed to be strengthened. At the same time, they wanted to make sure that the states and individuals didn't give up basic freedoms.

"They had just come out of fighting for eight long years against Great Britain, who they thought had violated various rights that British subjects were entitled to," says Cayton. "So they were very sensitive to the idea of a government having big powers."

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The Constitution--which John Adams once called the result of "the greatest single effort of national deliberation that the world has ever seen"--laid out a carefully calibrated structure for the new American nation, balancing the powers of the three branches of government, as well as the relationship between the federal government and the states.

But many people at the time thought the Constitution was incomplete. During the ratification debates of 1787 and 1788, detractors said the Constitution lacked protections for fundamental rights, like freedom of speech and the right to worship as one chooses. It lacked, in other words, a bill of rights.

Anti-Federalists, those who opposed the Constitution for a variety of reasons, said the shortcoming was so grave that states should refuse to ratify the Constitution. George Mason, a Virginia planter, was among them. He said he'd "sooner chop off my right hand than put it to the Constitution as it now stands."

James Madison and other supporters of the Constitution--the Federalists--offered a compromise: They agreed to propose a set of constitutional amendments in the first session of Congress.

With Madison's promise in mind, key states like Massachusetts, Maryland, Virginia, and New York voted for the Constitution, which took effect in March...