The U.S. Declaration of Independence and other major political statements surrounding the break with Great Britain are replete with the language of natural rights-i.e. rights that belong to all humans at all times. These rights come down to: 1) the right of any people to form a common government based on their consent; 2) the right of the people to judge the adequacy of their government as they experience its operation; and 3) the right of the people to alter, abolish, or replace that government whenever they see fit.

These natural rights rest variously on religious and/or philosophical grounding that links them with a universal human nature that will not be denied. Hence, these rights are natural and universal in their application. How are these rights "discovered," and how are they enforced?
The thrust of my presentation is that the history behind and surrounding the U.S. Bill of Rights suggests they were never considered to be natural rights, but rather a summation of political rights claimed by the American people for themselves. Americans did believe in natural rights, but they were in the Declaration of Independence and state bills of rights, not in the U.S. Bill of Rights.
I will review several things we now understand from the historical record:

1. If we look at the history of the rights "discovery .. accumulation," and codification that preceded
the U.S. Bill of Rights,, we do not find a natural rights pattern or natural rights claim.

a) English common law rights and privileges-the emergence of a standard and slowly changing sense of rights from the sum total of judicial decisions, parliamentary acts, and periodic recodification (e.g. Seldon, Coke, Blackstone, etc.)

b) American colonial rights-the gradual development of longer and longer codes of law in which rights, drawn from English common law and biblical sources, move from being "experimental" and thus subject to periodic review to more or less commonly shared lists of expectations.

c) State bills of rights as codifications of their respective colonial common law, but as general principles to guide the people and their legislators as much as anyone else hortatory and not legally enforceable

d) The U.S. Bill of Rights as the common denominator of state bills of rights

11. Madison's original proposed rights began with a statement of natural rights, but Congress
immediately struck these rights from the list. Any hortatory language he suggested was eliminated
when the rights we listed together at the end of the Constitution placement that had no
philosophical, legal, or historical basis. The status of the U.S. Bill of Rights is thus an accident of
history rather than the result of philosophically stating natural rights.

Ill. For at least one and a quarter century the U.S. Supreme Court (and everyone else) essentially
ignored the U.S. Bill of rights.

IV. Imagine what our view of rights might be today if, as Madison intended, the contents of the Bill of
Rights was scattered in isolated pieces throughout the constitution. OR If, as was the standard
practice of the founding era it was all at the beginning of the Constitution, included Madison's
original first amendment, and used the hortatory language not of rights per se but as principles of
government as was usually the case.

V. I believe Akhil Amar is correct. The U.S. Bill of Rights is a list of political rights, which in
content and sequence recapitulate and safeguard the U.S. Constitution as a political instrument.