Usually, when we talk about foundational legal
concepts, there's this expectation of, like,
total rigidity. Oh, yeah. We want them to be
permanent. Right. We kind of imagine pouring
concrete. You lay the foundation of a nation,
the concrete sets, and you just point to it and
say, you know, there it is. Those are the rules
forever. Yeah. You sign the massive historical
document. The ink dries. and it's locked away
in some climate -controlled vault, right? Exactly.
In the National Archives somewhere. I mean, that
is entirely by design. We are wired to want our
core rights to be visible and strictly categorized,
anchored in stone, basically. Because ambiguity
is scary. Ambiguity in human rights is terrifying.
So yeah, we look for permanence. But then if
you actually track how the language of those
rights travels through time, suddenly that concrete
foundation starts looking, well, a lot more like
wet clay. It really does. It's constantly shape
-shifting. And that's exactly what we're getting
into today. Welcome to the deep dive, by the
way. Our source material for this deep dive is
not a dense academic paper. No, not at all. It's
not a 500 page historical biography either. We
are actually doing a deep dive into a single
Wikipedia disambiguation page. Which is such
a unique starting point. Right. Specifically,
we're looking at the page for the exact term,
Bill of Rights. Which, you know, on the surface,
sounds like we're just reading a table of contents.
Yeah. But a disambiguation page is essentially
a map of linguistic evolution. Yeah. every single
time human society needed to borrow this specific
phrase over the last several centuries. And our
mission today is to explore exactly how that
single powerful phrase mutated, because the source
gives us this incredibly succinct foundational
definition right at the top. The base definition,
yeah. It says a Bill of Rights is simply, quote,
a declaration of the rights that a citizenry
have. Very creative forward. But by the time
we finish this deep dive, you are going to see
how a concept that started out dealing with the
absolute power of kings eventually trickled all
the way down to protect comic book artists. And
library patrons. And people paying off their
credit cards. It's wild. OK, let's unpack this.
We're going to start at the chronological beginning
of this Wikipedia list, looking at the base operating
system of entire nations. The early days. Yeah,
we are in 1689. and we see two very distinct
entries right out of the gate for 1689. First,
there's the Declaration of Right, 1689. The source
notes, this was actually a document given as
a speech, declaring the rights all citizens of
England should have. Wait, a speech? Yeah, literally
spoken. And right below it on the list is the
Bill of Rights 1689, which was actually passed
by the Parliament of England. I always just assume
these old documents were like drafted by a committee
in some dusty room and signed. But that transition
from a speech to a law is wild. It's a huge shift.
You are essentially speaking truth to power,
literally reading a list of demands out loud
to the incoming monarchs, William and Mary, and
just saying, here is what we should have. And
then the parliament actually has to do the heavy
lifting of passing it into law. Right, and the
source actually notes this 1689 bill was amended
several times, so it was never a one -and -done
deal. What's fascinating here is the underlying
mechanism. Prior to these documents, the prevailing
assumption in many parts of the world was that
rights were, well, granted by a monarch. Like
a gift. Exactly, privileges that could just be
revoked whenever. By passing a statutory bill
of rights, the English parliament established
the concept that a citizenry inherently possesses
rights. Oh, okay, I see. The document doesn't
give you the rights, it forces the government
to document them to protect you from the government
itself. You're drawing a box around the king.
But precisely. But - I have to push back a little
on the timeline here, because we have this English
document in 1689, but then the Wikipedia list
jumps forward an entire century before we hit
the massive boom in the late 18th century. The
Revolutionary era. Right. We get the United States
Bill of Rights, which was written in 1789 and
ratified in 1791. And in that exact same year,
1789, France drops the Declaration of the Rights
of Man and of the Citizen. A very busy year for
human rights. Seriously. So was this just a philosophical
trend that finally caught on, or was there a
specific catalyst that made massive populations
suddenly demand these written lists? The catalyst
was really the scale of the revolutions. I mean,
in 1689, England was basically just rearranging
its monarchy. Swapping out the management. Exactly.
But in 1789, the US and France were starting
from scratch. When you're booting up America
or completely rebooting France, you lack those
centuries of common law and tradition that held
English society together. Ah, so you need new
rules. You need a universal sweeping contract.
It's kind of the societal equivalent of the terms
and conditions you have to click agree to when
you turn on a new smartphone. Oh, that's a great
way to look at it. The language had to be absolute
like the rights of man. to lay the bedrock for
an entirely new society. Which works beautifully,
right, until the society outgrows the bedrock.
Which always happens. Always. And that structural
limitation forces the next major leap in our
source list. We move out of the 18th century,
and the list skips past the 19th century entirely,
landing squarely in the mid -20th century. A
huge gap, yeah. And here's where it gets really
interesting. In 1944, United States President
Franklin D. Roosevelt proposes something called
the Second Bill of Rights. which is a profoundly
strategic choice of words. He's taking a 150
-year -old sacred concept and applying it to
modern economics. The rhetorical genius of calling
it a second Bill of Rights is just stunning to
me. Oh, it's brilliant marketing. He is intentionally
borrowing the immense historical weight of the
original 1789 document. He isn't just saying,
hey, I have some new policy ideas about jobs
and housing. No, he's elevating it. He's telling
the public, economic security is just as fundamental
to your existence as freedom of speech or religion.
Because he needed that branding. Right. What
he was proposing was a massive expansion of the
government's role in daily life. Right. He needed
the heavy artillery. And if we connect this to
the bigger picture, 1944 is really the turning
point of the modern era. World War II fundamentally
shattered the illusion that 18th century national
frameworks were enough to protect human beings.
Because they clearly weren't. Right. A single
nation's Bill of Rights doesn't help you at all
if your nation is conquered or if your own government
turns against you. Yeah, that's a terrifying
realization. And you see that realization reflected
in the very next entries on our list. The definition
of citizenry expands globally. The United Nations
steps in. In 1948, we get the UN's Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. And then decades
later, in 1976, the International Bill of Human
Rights. It's a massive shift in scope. You aren't
just a citizen of England or France or the US
anymore. You are a citizen of the globe. And
notice how the mechanism changes here. The UN
documents are aspirational. They set a global
moral standard. They can't exactly send a U .N.
police force to your house to enforce it. Exactly.
But that pressure trickles back down to individual
nations, forcing them to realize their old operating
systems need a massive software update. OK, I
see where this is going. The Wikipedia page highlights
Canada as a prime example of this evolution.
They have two separate entries. First, an act
of the Canadian Parliament in 1960 called the
Canadian Bill of Rights. But wait, an act of
parliament is just a regular law, right? Like
a later government could just come along and
vote to repeal it if they wanted to. Precisely.
It lacked the permanence we talked about earlier.
The concrete wasn't set. Ah, right. So in 1982,
Canada took a much bigger step. they embedded
the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms directly
into the Canadian Constitution. Wow. They moved
the rules from a piece of paper on the desk to
the load -bearing beams of the house itself.
They took the wet clay and finally poured the
concrete. Exactly. And the list shows they aren't
the only ones doing this modern retrofitting.
We see the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990.
We see the Hong Kong Bill of Rights Ordinance
enacted in 1991. It was a very popular trend
in the late 20th century. The source even mentions
a proposed Bill of Rights bill in the United
Kingdom, which tells me nations are still actively
debating how to structure this architecture today.
It really proves the 18th century tool listing
out rights to constrain power is incredibly durable.
I mean, a 1789 document couldn't possibly anticipate
the realities of a 1990s globalized world, but
the format survived. But format survival only
goes so far when the original documents had massive
blind spots. Huge blind spots. Once the macro
level nations had their foundational rights locked
in, a glaring new problem emerged. Like, what
happens when standard national rights simply
fail to protect specific vulnerable groups? And
that failure shifts our Wikipedia outline entirely.
It really does. We move away from nations and
the globe, and we look at the see also section
of the page. The term Bill of Rights gets adopted
by highly specific demographics. We enter the
era of specialization. I'm going to read a few
of these entries, and I just want you to think
about how different they are from the French
Revolution. OK. We have the homeless Bill of
Rights. The Veterans Bill of Rights, which the
source notes is better known as the GI Bill,
we have a homosexual Bill of Rights drafted by
the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations.
There is a law enforcement officer's Bill of
Rights, an Islamic Bill of Rights for women in
the mosque, and the Sexual Assault Survivors
Bill of Rights, which is contained in a larger
rights act. That is just a staggering cross -section
of society. You have government employees, marginalized
communities, religious subgroups, and trauma
survivors all utilizing the exact same linguistic
tool. But I have a genuine question about this.
Does taking this grand historical title, a title
meant to build entire nations and applying it
to very specific subgroups, I mean, does that
dilute the meaning of the phrase? How do you
mean? Like, if everyone has a Bill of Rights,
doesn't it just become a glorified list of demands?
This raises an important question about how language
functions as a tool for social equity. I'd argue
it does the exact opposite of diluting the phrase.
It weaponizes the historical gravity of the phrase
for empowerment. Weaponizes it. Let's look at
the mechanism. If you call something a list of
guidelines or a policy proposal, it implies it's
optional. It's up for debate. Sure, it sounds
bureaucratic. But by drafting a homeless bill
of rights or a sexual assault survivor's bill
of rights, these groups are fundamentally stating,
we are part of the citizenry. And we are demanding
the unassailable protections historically reserved
for the majority. Oh, wow. They are holding up
a mirror to the original 1789 documents and saying,
you wrote, all men are created equal, but you
clearly missed a spot. Exactly. Take the Homosexual
Bill of Rights mentioned in the source, drafted
by the North American Conference of Homophile
Organizations, which was a network of early gay
rights groups in the late 1960s. Right. They
weren't just asking for nicer treatment. They
were demanding the legal status of a recognized
citizenry. Consider the alternative for a moment.
If the advocates behind the Sexual Assault Survivors
Bill of Rights just ask for, you know, better
evidence handling, It gets lost in bureaucratic
red tape. Absolutely. It just becomes a memo.
But by framing it as a bill of rights, they shifted
the survivor from being a mere evidence provider
in a police system to a citizen with inherent
rights to have their rape kit tracked and preserved.
It implies a moral imperative. Exactly. Violating
those terms is no longer just a breach of policy.
It is a violation of a sacred social contract.
The GI Bill is another perfect example of how
successful this framing is. The source specifically
links it as the Veterans Bill of Rights. After
World War II, the U .S. could have just offered
a military benefits package. But benefits can
be cut during a budget crisis. Precisely. Framing
it as a Bill of Rights solidified the idea that
veterans were inherently owed housing and education
by the nation they bled for. It completely changes
the psychology of the law. It really does. And
just as a quick aside, the source lists all these
diverse groups from LGBTQ organizations to...
advocates for women in the mosque without commentary.
And so are we. Right. We're just looking at the
language. The fascinating through line isn't
the specific politics of each group. It's the
fact that they all independently decided this
specific phrase was the heaviest linguistic hammer
they could swing. It is the ultimate bypass of
standard lobbying. They're identifying a massive
power imbalance, whether that's a homeless individual
facing a hostile city ordinance or a woman seeking
equal space in a mosque and drafting a declaration.
correct it. So we've gone from kings and parliaments
to the UN and global human rights all the way
down to vulnerable demographics demanding equal
protection. Quite the journey. But the Wikipedia
disambiguation page doesn't stop there. The final
evolution of the term is where the concept gets
hyper specific. We move out of life and death
human rights and into the regulation of daily
commerce niche professions and local community
standards. the micro rights. This is where the
concept infiltrates our everyday routines. On
the economic and consumer front, the source lists
a consumer bill of rights and a taxpayer bill
of rights and incredibly a credit card holders
bill of rights, which is so specific. Very. It
was specifically contained within the Credit
Card Act of 2009. We also have civic and educational
versions. The California Voter Bill of Rights,
which the page notes, is an adaptation of the
Voting Rights Act. There is an academic bill
of rights, a New Jersey anti -bullying Bill of
Rights Act. and the Library Bill of Rights published
by the American Library Association. We also
see the creative and environmental sectors utilizing
it. The Creators' Bill of Rights and the Environmental
Bill of Rights, which is also listed as Agenda
21. I am looking at this entry for an academic
Bill of Rights, and I have to admit I'm a little
lost, or even the New Jersey Anti -Bullying Bill
of Rights Act. It seems like a stretch. Yeah,
like how does a state policy about middle school
bullying carry the weight of a constitutional
concept? So what does this all mean? Look at
the journey. 1689 English Parliament to 2009
credit card holders. It's a massive leap. I look
at this list and the only conclusion I can draw
is that the phrase Bill of Rights has essentially
become brand franchising. Brand franchising.
Okay, expand on that. How do you mean? Think
about it like a universally recognized open source
template. You no longer need to be a revolutionary
founding father wearing a powdered wig to use
it. Right. No wigs required anymore. If you want
to establish how comic book artists are treated
by massive publishers, which is what the creator's
Bill of Rights was doing in the late 80s to fight
expletive work for higher contracts, you just
download the Bill of Rights template. That makes
total sense. If you want to stop banks from hitting
people with hidden late fees, you use the template
to pass the 2009 Credit Card Act. If you want
to mandate how a school in New Jersey reports
bullying, you just slap the title on it. The
historical branding does all the heavy lifting
to convince people It's important. That is a
phenomenal way to look at it. The concept has
been entirely democratized. The underlying logic
here is that the word citizenry, from our original
definition, a declaration of the rights that
a citizenry have, has fractured into a thousand
different modern identities. Fractured. You are
a citizen of your country, yes. But you're also
a citizen of the consumer market. You're a citizen
of your local library. You're a citizen of the
digital economy. And Every one of those sub -citizenships
requires its own set of declared rights to protect
you from the specific powers that be in that
arena. A national constitution doesn't tell a
credit card company how to calculate interest.
Exactly. The power dynamic is the key. When you
sign a credit card agreement, the bank holds
all the power. They hold all the cards, literally.
Literally. A credit card holder's Bill of Rights
draws a box around the bank, utilizing the exact
same conceptual architecture that the 1689 document
used to draw a box around the English king. That's
amazing. The American Library Association, which
drafted their library Bill of Rights to resist
censorship, wields the tool just like the French
Assembly. The scale is vastly different, but
the causality is identical. Identify an imbalance
of power, declare the inherent rights of the
user, and codify it to prevent abuse. It's just
incredible. We started this deep dive looking
at a simple Wikipedia disambiguation page, which
most people just click past when they search
for the wrong thing. It's usually just a navigational
annoyance. Exactly. But hidden inside that mechanical
list of links is this massive, sweeping story
of human organization. We started with a 1689
speech in England defining the conditions of
a monarchy, and we ended up in a 2009 U .S. law
protecting consumers from hidden credit card
fees. It covers a lot of ground. It shows how
our definition of a declaration of rights is
constantly shrinking and expanding to fit the
anxieties and the specific needs of the times.
The concrete foundation isn't static at all.
We're pouring new concrete every single day.
The reality is, you, the person listening to
this right now, are navigating these overlapping
layers of rights every single day. Yeah, you
really are. When you vote in a local election,
when you swipe your credit card to buy coffee,
when you check out a book at the library, or
just when you exist in your community, you are
walking through a complex, invisible web of declared
rights that someone, somewhere, had to fight
to write down. We are constantly remodeling the
house. Which leaves us with a final thought for
you to chew on. We've talked about grand nations,
global UN organizations, specific demographics,
and even everyday consumers. We've covered it
all. But if you were to draft a personal Bill
of Rights for your own life today, not for a
nation, not for a demographic group, but just
for you as the sole citizen of your own life,
what would be the very first unassailable right
you write into the concrete? That's a great question.
Think about what boundaries you need to draw
to protect yourself today. Thanks for joining
us on this Deep Dive.