D’oh! We all need to understand our rights

Quick — can you list the five rights named in the First Amendment?

If not, you have company.

A 2006 survey found that only twenty-five percent of Americans can name more than one.

Yet more than half of these adults could name at least two characters from The Simpsons, a popular television cartoon. (By the way, the rights are free speech, religion, press, assembly, and petition.)

Now think about this. If familiarity with the U.S. Constitution is lacking, awareness of the provisions of the state constitution is deplorable.

This is unfortunate. Our fundamental rights cannot be exercised or preserved if we lose sight of them.

As we celebrate the Fourth of July, the day marks an important occasion in Washington history: the opening of the state constitutional convention in 1889.

The convention delegates believed that men and women are created with inherent rights, which are granted to them by the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.”

And thus the Washington Constitution declares: “All political power is inherent in the people, and governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and are established to protect and maintain individual rights” (Art. I, Sec. 1).

In our system of federalism, state constitutions were intended to be the “first line of defense” for the protection of individual liberties.

In 1986, the Washington Supreme Court issued the landmark decision State v. Gunwall, in which the court recognized that the Washington Constitution often provides greater protection of individual rights than the federal constitution.

For example, in the area of free speech, the U.S. Constitution says “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech….”

The Washington Constitution, however, explicitly protects specific activities: “Every person may freely speak, write and publish on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that right.”

Under the state constitution, Washington courts generally require higher levels of justification for laws that impede speech.

Eminent domain continues to frustrate property owners. The federal constitution states that private property shall not be taken for public use, without just compensation.

The Washington Constitution explicitly prohibits the taking of private property for private use, and requires compensation if property is merely damaged.

Unfortunately, increasingly indulgent court decisions have eaten away at this protection.

The right to keep and bear arms also finds broader protection in the state constitution.

The U.S. Constitution says: “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

For decades, until last week’s ground-breaking U.S. Supreme Court decision on the subject, an academic debate had raged over whether gun ownership is a right held by individual citizens or is a collective right, predicated on service in a militia.

But the state constitution precludes this question by stating: “The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself, or the state, shall not be impaired….”

These are but a few examples of the differences in our state and federal constitutions.

Unfortunately, a complete record of the Washington Constitutional Convention of 1889 doesn’t exist. The delegates hired court reporters who kept verbatim transcripts of debates and speeches, but when the legislature failed to appropriate payment, the stenographers destroyed their notes.

The thin historical record increases the need for careful analysis of the state founders’ intent.

When citizens are educated in the sources of their freedoms, and familiar with attempts in history to limit these freedoms, they are better equipped to recognize new encroachments.

Our Constitution counsels that “frequent recurrence to fundamental principles is essential to the security of individual right and the perpetuity of free government” (Art. I, Sec. 32).

This admonishment is appropriate not only for lawmakers and judges, but for all those who love liberty and seek to preserve it.

Michael Reitz is general counsel of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation.

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