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Sixteen Principles, One Standard
Each card names the governing clause and states the protection plainly. Articles in this series begin with the text, then move to meaning, purpose, limits, history, and lawful civic use.
First Amendment
Speech
Government may not punish you for what you say merely because officials dislike it. The protection is broad, and it is not unlimited.
First Amendment
Press
A free press is a structural check on power, not a favor extended to journalists by those in office.
First Amendment
Religious Liberty
Two clauses working together: government neither establishes religion nor prohibits its free exercise.
First Amendment
Assembly
The right is to assemble peaceably. Peaceableness is part of the right, not a restriction on it.
First Amendment
Petition
The oldest and least-discussed civic tool: the right to ask government for redress and expect a channel for the asking.
Second Amendment
Arms
A right tied in its own text to a well regulated militia and to the security of a free state, and much litigated since.
Third and Fourth Amendments
Privacy
The home, papers, and effects sit behind a warrant requirement built from colonial experience with general searches.
Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments
Due Process
Government may act against life, liberty, or property only through fair, known, and reviewable procedure.
Sixth and Seventh Amendments
Juries
Ordinary citizens sit between the state and the accused, and between litigants in civil disputes.
Eighth Amendment
Punishment
Bail, fines, and punishments are bounded. Proportionality is a constitutional question, not only a moral one.
Ninth Amendment
Unenumerated Rights
Listing some rights does not deny others retained by the people. A rule of construction with real consequences.
Tenth Amendment
Federalism
Powers not delegated to the United States are reserved to the states or to the people.
Fourteenth Amendment
Equal Protection
The Reconstruction promise that no state shall deny any person the equal protection of the laws.
Fifteenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-Fourth, Twenty-Sixth Amendments
Voting
Four amendments, each written because the franchise had been denied. The right is peaceful power.
Article II
Executive Power
The executive is granted defined powers and bound by the oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.
Article III, Section 3
Treason
Deliberately the narrowest crime the Constitution defines, written to keep loyalty from becoming a political weapon.