Your Rights, By Who You Are

Nobody thinks in amendment numbers. Pick who you are, and see where the founding documents touch your life, in their own words.

In everyday civic life

There is no single 'right to vote' clause in the original Constitution.

You keep your constitutional rights when you walk through the schoolhouse gate, even if schools may draw the lines tighter than a pu…

The home holds a special place in the Constitution.

Every tax you pay traces back to a specific grant of power in the Constitution, and to specific limits on it.

Jury service is one of the few times an ordinary citizen exercises a piece of government power directly.

The Constitution names sex explicitly in only one place.

Press freedom in the United States rides on the same sentence that protects everyone's speech, and it is one of the few places the f…

The Constitution shaped American business long before any regulatory agency existed: it built a single national market, protected co…

When your rights are tested

The right to gather and object to your government is not one clause but several, and it starts with the very first words of the Bill…

If you or someone close to you is taken into custody, the Constitution sets a floor no police station can lower.

The Second Amendment is one sentence with two clauses, and nearly every debate about firearms turns on how they relate.

The Constitution draws a careful line: some protections say 'the people' or 'citizens,' but the great due-process guarantees say 'an…

More of the Bill of Rights is devoted to criminal procedure than to any other subject.