Why are the first ten amendments to the Constitution called the Bill of Rights?

Answer 1

It means what they say. These describe rights of a US citizen as devised by our founding fathers. (The first, second, fourth and other amendments do not grant or guarantee any rights or freedoms. The First Amendment is restrictive only, limiting governnment by it not passing any laws that would abridge certain rights which had existed for decades. The Second did not grant the right to own and bear arms--only that this aleady existing right hall not be infringed. The ninth amendment is the one which had the people retail all rights, other than the ones already in the Consitution. The founders/framers also specified that public liberty or rights of the people, collectively, as the public or a partial public are retained as much as Individul Liberty, or rights of the person.

Nearly all of the 12 clauses sent back to the States by the First Congress were prepared as individual declaratory/restrictive clauses and other amending clauses, with some statements changed only to make them restrictive. The third clause sent back was written days after what became the tenth and ninth amendments, which were the first two prepared and presented. The term Bill of Rights does not appear in the document sent back---but the First Congress specified in the document from where the declaratory/restrictive clauses came, and provided two major secondary reasons for them: To Prevent (1) Misconstruction of the Constitution and 2) abuse of its powers. The fact that they were ratified as individual clauses -- no A Bill of Rights document -- is that all clauses dropped two slots when the first two clauses were not ratified.

The third clause---strictly a restrictive clause---dropped to the first slot and did not grant nor could it guarantee rights and freedoms, nor could it make any affirmative or positive statement, such as a separation of church and state, which one Supreme Court mistakenly claimed.