What are five purposes of the bill of rights?

Answer 1

The word "purposes" is extremely vague. I can let someone answer this at a later time to oversimplify the answer. The best answers to this are as follows.

(1) To get the Constitution itself ratified. You may realize that all ten articles of the Bill of Rights are known as Amendments. This is because they were not a part of the original document. The best way to understand their existence is to understand that at the time of ratification there was a divisive split between what are generally referred to as Federalists (those in favor and authors of the Constitution) and the Anti-Federalists. In order to rally enough support to ratify the Constitution, the Federalists (largely seen through James Madison) had to promise these to the Anti-Federalists.

(2) To enumerate the rights of citizens of the United States that could not be infringed upon, without acceptable exceptions, by the Federal government (ultimately these limitations were incorporated into limitations upon the States as well by the 14th Amendment)

(3) The best answer is because James Madison needed to keep his promise to his constituents.