The Blaine amendment was a proposed 1876 amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The structure of the American Bill of Rights reflects its eighteenth-century origins. The framers of the Constitution did not include a bill of rights because they honestly believed that one was unnecessary.

State constitution making began during the Revolution. By 1787, when delegates from twelve of the original thirteen states (Rhode Island never sent any delegates) met in Philadelphia to write the national constitution, eleven of the first thirteen states had written constitutions.

The Becker amendment was one of the more significant congressional attempts to overturn an unpopular holding of the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the United States antipolygamy laws were exclusively aimed at the polygamous practices of the nineteenth- century Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) which began to publicly practice and advocate polygamy in 1852.

From the ‘‘Salem witch trials’’ to the criminal prosecutions that constitute part of the government’s ‘‘war on terror,’’ American criminal law has been used to stamp out threats, perceived or actual, to federal and state governments.

Congress announced that the policy of the United States was to ‘‘protect and preserve’’ the rights of American Indians, Alaskan Natives, and Native Hawaiians ‘‘to believe, express, and exercise’’ their ‘‘traditional religions’’ in a joint resolution adopted in 1978, now known as the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA).

Sedition may be defined as any illegal action tending to cause the disruption or overthrow of the government.

In 1981, Congress enacted the Adolescent Family Life Demonstration Grants Act (AFLA) in response to the severe social and economic consequences that often follow pregnancy and childbirth among unmarried adolescents.

A defining principle of the United States is the separation between church and state.