Do We Really Have a Bill of Rights? – Prof. Jerome Foss

Feb 16, 2026

Jerome C. Foss, a scholar of Catholic political thought and the U.S. Constitution, appears. He traces English and Lockean roots of American rights and explains why the founders resisted a standalone Bill of Rights. He explores Madison’s political strategy, the Constitution’s integrated limits, and how modern readings shift civic imagination away from communal republicanism.

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INSIGHT

English Roots Of Rights

English constitutional history (Magna Carta, 1689 Bill of Rights) shaped American ideas of liberty.
Those English documents framed rights as concessions from monarchs rather than inherent natural rights.

INSIGHT

Locke And Revolutionary Claims

Locke framed natural rights (life, liberty, estate) as universal and enforceable via institutions.
Colonists appealed to both natural and conventional rights in resisting British rule.

ANECDOTE

Mason's Virginia Declaration

George Mason authored the Virginia Declaration of Rights which preceded the national Constitution.
Mason's text combined natural rights language with many specific protections later mirrored in state and federal documents.

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Prof. Jerome Foss argues that what Americans call the “Bill of Rights” is not a true bill of rights but a set of constitutional amendments best understood within a Federalist—and broadly Thomistic—vision of law, liberty, and the common good that resists reducing politics to individual rights talk.

This lecture was given on November 4th, 2025, at Washington & Lee University.

For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.

About the Speakers:

Jerome C. Foss is Professor of Politics, Endowed Director of the Center for Catholic Thought and Culture, and Director of the SVC Core Curriculum at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Foss earned his BA from the University of Dallas and his MA and PhD from Baylor University. His research focuses on Catholic political thought, American political thought, and literature and political philosophy. His most recent book, Flannery O'Connor and the Perils of Governing by Tenderness, brings these interests together. He has also published on the history of political philosophy, the U.S. Constitution, Constitutional Law, James Madison, and Abraham Lincoln. He is currently working on a scholarly book on the first ten amendments to the Constitution (commonly known as the Bill of Rights) and a book for a more general Catholic audience on the Declaration of Independence. Foss enjoys teaching a variety of courses, including courses on the Constitutional Convention and Shakespeare as a political thinker. As Director of the CCTC, Foss helps administer the college's Benedictine Leadership Studies Program, has developed and led the colleges summer program in Rome, founded and edits an academic journal entitled Conversatio, and organizes conferences, seminars, and other events.

Keywords: American Constitutionalism, Anti Federalists And Rights, Bill Of Rights, Federalist Political Theory, James Madison, Natural Law And Natural Rights, Republican Government Thomistic Political Thought, United States Constitution