Throughout history, most governments have been founded on the absolute authority of a sovereign ruler: a king or queen. The earliest document that wrested this power away and granted rights to the people was the Magna Carta. Signed by King John of England at Windsor in 1215, the Magna Carta was meant to appease several rebelling noblemen and granted certain powers to the Church and populace while placing limits on the reach of the Crown....
Throughout history, most governments have been founded on the absolute authority of a sovereign ruler: a king or queen. The earliest document that wrested this power away and granted rights to the people was the Magna Carta. Signed by King John of England at Windsor in 1215, the Magna Carta was meant to appease several rebelling noblemen and granted certain powers to the Church and populace while placing limits on the reach of the Crown. Though neither the king nor the rebels honored their agreement, the Magna Carta stands as a symbol of the first time rights were guaranteed to subjects by a legal document.
In 1776, Thomas Jefferson drafted a Declaration of Independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain. In it, he established that people are "endowed...with certain unalienable rights." These rights, to life, to liberty, and to the pursuit of happiness, denied the absolute rule of the king, and would become the foundation for the codified and clearly outlined Bill of Rights.
After gaining independence from Britain in 1783, the American Continental Congress set about writing a Constitution of the United States, which defined the systems by which the new government would function. As an addendum to that Constitution, they added ten Amendments to the Constitution that explicitly defined the rights of the citizens of the United States of America. These rights are at the center of American Constitutional law, and are intended to place the power of governance firmly in the hands of the people.
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