Читать книгу Justice Rehnquist, the Supreme Court, and the Bill of Rights - Steven T. Seitz - Страница 17

The following chapters explore whether and to what extent the Bill of Rights constrained the powers of the central government by empowering the individual. The book also examines the extent to which the Bill of Rights checks the state governments after addition of the Civil War Amendments. Excepting the 13th Amendment, the federal courts did not reach individual action except through the statutory and other actions of the federal or state governments. The Federalists and anti-Federalists held widely disparate views of what the Bill of Rights would accomplish. Yet another view of the Bill of Rights develops in the mid-twentieth century. This book traces interactions among the three points of sovereignty: the central government, the state governments, and the individual. The anti-Federalists thought their interests were the people’s interest. Madison took issue. The view of human beings under the Bill of Rights was different from the view underlying the Constitution. Treating individual rights and state rights as one, as the anti-Federalists were wont to do, muddled these sovereignties. Soon there would be three: the sovereign federal government, the semi-sovereign states, and semi-sovereign individuals. As the three sovereignties differentiated, the ordinary individual acquired a protected sphere into which the central government and later the state governments should not invade.

The protected sphere speaks to the inherent worth and dignity of each person. It also implies that individuals are capable of self-direction and self-development. The existence of individual protected spheres finally suggests that an individual has enough social capacity to tolerate the freedom of others. Madison recognized that the Bill of Rights spoke to the higher capacities of individuals while the Constitution spoke to the lower elements. These conflicting views of the human material inputs for self-governments and for whom the outputs crafted policies were not just conflicting philosophies but also conflicting modes of government. The peculiar circumstances of American institutions left heavy marks on the evolution of American Constitutional law. This is a subsidiary object of the present study.