Law Commons^™

Trivial Rights, Philip A. Hamburger

Faculty Scholarship

In the summer of 1789, when the House of Representatives was formulating the amendments that became the Bill of Rights, Theodore Sedgwick of Massachusetts argued against enumerating the right of assembly. The House, he urged, "might have gone into a very lengthy enumeration of rights; they might have declared that a man should have a right to wear his hat if he pleased, that he might get up when he pleased, and go to bed when he thought proper ... [Was] it necessary to list these trifles in a declaration of rights, under a Government where none of them were …