Part IV Rights, Ch.23 Liberty
James E. Fleming, Linda C. Mcclain
From: The Oxford Handbook of the U.S. Constitution
Edited By: Mark Tushnet, Sanford Levinson, Mark A. Graber
“To secure the blessings of liberty,” the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution proclaims, “We the People … ordain and establish this Constitution.” The Constitution is said to protect liberty through three principal strategies. First, the design of the Constitution as a whole protects liberty. As Alexander Hamilton famously put it in Federalist 84, in arguing that a bill of rights enumerating specific liberties would be unnecessary: “the Constitution is itself, in every rational sense, and to every useful purpose, A BILL OF RIGHTS.”1 He contended that the...
