What Are Constitutional Rights and How Are They Enforced

`        What are constitutional rights, and how effectively are they enforced?

Constitutional rights can be found within the 27 amendments to the US constitution. They are explicitly listed within the first Bill of Rights that makes up the first ten amendments, as well as in the 13th, 14th and 15th Reconstruction amendments. These rights have been enforced over the past two centuries with varying degrees of success.

In general, the constitutional rights are very well enforced due to the Constitution being concise and therefore fairly well-known by many Americans as it is taught in most schools. Despite this, a 2011 poll revealed that only 28% of Americans could name all three branches of government. The same poll also revealed that 78% of Americans knew that the first ten amendments were known as the Bill of Rights, a figure that suggests the Bill of Rights is of high common knowledge in America. If the public can hold the authorities to account on their rights, they are more likely to be well enforced. The Supreme Court was set up purely to interpret the Constitution in a modern context and is the highest law making authority in the U.S. The presence of the Supreme Court has allowed the Constitution to still carry relevance in the 21st Century.

Constitutional rights such as the right to a trial by jury and requirements for search warrants based on probable cause are still enforced effectively, with all state and federal courts and police departments being required to enforce these. The 13th Amendment that abolished slavery is obviously enforced well today. Also, the Fourteenth and Nineteenth which gave women and blacks the right to vote is enforced effectively today although the former wasn’t properly enforced until 100 years after it was ratified as they made it very difficult for blacks to vote in some areas of the US until the sixties.