The New Bill of Rights

Written By We The People

This is our own version of a New Bill of Rights. More than anything, this is simple thought experiment with one purpose in mine: creating a list of protections or restrictions which would make our country a better and more prosperous place to live. We won’t cover everything which deserves being covered in a list of rights owed to the people of the nation, but we will cover as many as we can. Our goal is not only to discover a right which we are owed, but to express that right in as much detail as we can to ensure that as little bastardization of our intention as possible can occur.

The biggest challenge this poses is finding a way to express our ownership of a right in such a way that it cannot backfire and leave us flatfooted. A lot of the wording has been left intentionally vague in some areas while being direct in others. For example, exceptions are made and can be assumed for every right when it comes to active investigation for crimes (notice the word ‘active’).

Any other issues which may arise during the enactment of our New Bill of Rights are either oversights which, I would hope, would be brought to our attention so that we can address it or, would be so obscure that it would be best left to the discretion of judges to fine-tune.

I am not a lawyer nor am I a constitutional scholar. My wording makes sense to me and I assume it makes sense to others. If this is not the case, let me know. I use the existing Constitution and Bill of Rights as a template for how to structure The New Bill of Rights, not to inform the language or readability of it.



Article 1 – (The Right To A Well-Funded, Free And Competitive Education)

Being that education is a necessity for the well-being and prosperity for every individual citizen, regardless of race, location, wealth, or any other conceivable criteria, all publicly available schools shall be funded equally as measured by the amount of students in attendance. No state shall pass a law reducing or increasing the budgets of any schools in their jurisdiction to be separate from the funding of other schools. Private, chartered or limited educational facilities for all except higher learning shall be rendered inactive from here on so-as to provide an equal base education for all citizens. Children receiving education outside of a traditional classroom shall be held to the exact educational curriculum as regulated by their age and scoring levels.

Article 2 – The Right to a Reasonable Expectation of Privacy (Both In and Out Of The Public Domain)

Section 1

A person and their property shall not be recorded into any media which may then or later become publicly available without either their express written or otherwise recorded consent. Without any documented consent, the removal or covering of said persons or property must take place before such media may be distributed.

Section 2

When within the boundaries of a person’s own property where the barriers of such property may or may not have points of visibility from the public, a person may exercise a freedom from public scrutiny unless such express conditions are met which may be seen as an invitation to such scrutiny. Conditions which may qualify as an invitation to scrutiny of a person of property shall include a general acknowledgment of the public in body, verbiage, and visual or audio medium.

Section 3

Evidence or documentation of a person or their property in any digital or like medium shall be considered guarded private property owned solely by the owner of the devices used to create or access the network which produced such evidence and documentation. This property shall not be made publicly or privately available to any other person or entity without the direct and express consent of the owner except as it pertains to active criminal investigation.

Section 4

Physical, digital or other mediums of correspondence between two or more persons or entities shall be considered property owned evenly by each contributor to the correspondence. Such correspondence may not be made publicly available without the express consent of all owners. A person’s ownership may only apply to parts of the correspondence in which they were an active participant or in which references are made involving a correspondence which they otherwise have part ownership of.

Article 3 – The Right To Affordable and Quality Housing


All persons should be granted the right to a housed living space of their own with access to decent food preparation and storage spaces as well as adequate proper hygiene facilities, free from regard to age, gender, race, orientation, background, or any other trait which may differentiate themselves from another person. A person shall not be stripped from their housing by any private entity. Basic housing shall be considered a non-profitable industry with the exception of extravagances and luxuries. A person unable to procure decent housing on their own shall be granted access to the most basic of housing essentials including, but not limited to, privacy, food preparation and storage spaces, adequate hygiene facilities and separate sleeping quarters.