History & philosophy · 1791
The Bill of Rights
Ratified December 15, 1791
The first ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States, ratified on December 15, 1791.
Read the text The whole poster as a web page
- Print from
- A3
- License
- Public domain
- Source
- archives.gov
- Retrieved
- 27 September 2026
- Language
- English
- Rights holder
- First Congress of the United States, 1789
Theme
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Edition
Transcription by the National Archives of “the first ten amendments to the Constitution in their original form”, the second part of the page “The Bill of Rights: A Transcription”, headed “The U.S. Bill of Rights”; its note says that “the capitalization and punctuation in this version is from the enrolled original of the Joint Resolution of Congress proposing the Bill of Rights”. The ten amendments, with their headings “Amendment I” to “Amendment X”, are set word for word. Left out: the first part of the page, the transcription of the whole Joint Resolution of 1789 (its preamble, the twelve articles and the attestation), whose Articles 3 to 12 are the same ten amendments; the kicker and the footer take the dates and the facts they give from the notes of the page.
Rights
Proposed by the First Congress of the United States on 25 September 1789 and ratified on 15 December 1791. In the United States, it was published before 1931, and the transcription is a work of the National Archives, a federal agency (17 U.S.C. 105). In France, it is an official act of a public authority, and its authors, members of the First Congress, all died long before 1 January 1956 (James Madison, who drafted the amendments, on 28 June 1836).
The National Archives state: “Works of the U.S. Government that have been produced by the National Archives and Records Administration are in the public domain and may be copied and distributed without permission.” (https://www.archives.gov/global-pages/privacy.html)
