the almost daily eruption of new disputes over the very things that most agitated our forebears: rights. Does Madonna have a First Amendment right to have her steamy rock video aired on television? Is there a right to life? A right to abortion? Do the homeless have a right to shelter? Here, historian James H. Hutson recalls the equally difficult time Americans had sorting through rights before fram- ing the Bill of Rights; legal scholar Gary McDowell casts a critical eye on the proliferation of...