A bill of rights is a list of the most important rights of the citizens of a country. The purpose of these bills is to protect those rights against infringement by the government. The term "bill of rights" originates from England, where it referred to the Bill of Rights 1689. Bills of rights may be entrenched or unentrenched. An entrenched bill of rights cannot be modified or repealed by a country's legislature through normal procedure, instead requiring a supermajority or referendum; often it is part of a country's constitution and therefore subject to special procedures applicable to constitutional amendments. An unentrenched bill of rights is a normal statute law and as such can be modified or repealed by the legislature at will. Not every jurisdiction enforces the protection of the rights articulated in its bill of rights.

Australia is the only Western country with neither a constitutional nor legislative bill of rights, although there is ongoing debate in many of Australia's states. Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard has argued against a bills of rights for Australia as transferring power from elected politicians to unelected judges and bureaucrats.¹² Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) are the only regions of the nation's states to have a human rights bill.

Contents 1 List of bills of rights 2 See also 3 References 4 External links

List of bills of rights

• The Code of Hammurabi, a 4,000 year old document of laws and punishments that apply to every human being (and thus, vicarious freedoms) literally "set in stone." One of several similar codes from this period in the Middle East.
• Constitution of Ancient Athens, establishing the Athenian democracy, allowing elected leaders and separate branches of government written by Cleisthenes (508 BC; Greece)
• Magna Carta (1215; England)
• Golden Bull of 1222 (1222; Hungary)
• Dušan's Code (1349; Serbia)
• Pacta Conventa (1573; Poland)
• Henrician Articles (1573; Poland)
• Petition of Right (1628; England)
• Bill of Rights 1689 (England) and Claim of Right Act 1689 (Scotland) This applied to all British Colonies of the time, and was later entrenched in the laws of those colonies that became nations - for instance in Australia with the Colonial Laws Validity Act 1865 and reconfirmed by the Statute of Westminster 1931
• Virginia Bill of Rights (June 1776)
• Preamble to the United States Declaration of Independence (July 1776)
• Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789; France)
• Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution (completed in 1789, ratified in 1791)
• Constitution of Greece (1822; Epidaurus)
• Basic rights and liberties in Finland (1919)^{citation needed}
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
• Fundamental rights and duties of citizens in People's Republic of China (1949)
• European Convention on Human Rights (1950)
• Fundamental Rights of Indian citizens (1950)
• Implied Bill of Rights (a theory in Canadian constitutional law)
• Canadian Bill of Rights (1960)
• Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982)
• Article 5 of the Constitution of Brazil (1988)
• New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (1990)
• Hong Kong Bills of Rights Ordinance (1991)
• Constitution of South Africa Chapter 2: Bill of Rights (1996)
• Human Rights Act 1998 (United Kingdom)
• Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (2006)

See also

• Bill of Rights Defense Committee
• British Bill of Rights
• Civil rights
• Constitution of South Korea
• Human rights
• Inalienable rights
• Natural rights

References

External links

• Transcript of the original U.S. Bill of Rights from the National Archives.
• The History Channel: Bill of Rights
• Bill of Rights in various formats with audio.
• A New British Bill of Rights: The Case For
• Human Rights Act for Australia, Amnesty International Australia