The State Constitutional Pedigree of the U.S. Bill of Rights.

A direct comparison between the U.S. Bill of Rights and prominent English common law documents shows that the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution have only a limited relationship to English antecedents. Nor were the amendment proposals by the state ratifying conventions the primary source of the U.S. Bill of Rights. Instead, this famous addition to the federal Constitution was a summary of the common core found in the seven existing state bills of rights. James Madison's use of this source rested upon colonial developments in rights theory, contrasting notions of rights in England and America, competing notions of liberty in America in the 1780s, and the political exigencies surrounding the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]