Today is the anniversary of the adoption of the Virginia
Declaration of Rights, an important precursor to the Bill of
Rights in the U.S. Constitution. As explained on the National
Archives web site: Virginia's Declaration of Rights was drawn
upon by Thomas Jefferson for the opening paragraphs of the
Declaration of Independence. It was widely copied by the other
colonies and became the basis of the Bill of Rights. Written by
George Mason, it was adopted by the Virginia Constitutional
Convention on June 12, 1776.In his 1992 history of the American
Bill of Rights, The Great Rights of Mankind, Bernard Schwartz
notes on page one that, in contrast to the "rudimentary" English
Bill of Rights of 1689, "the Virginia Declaration of Rights of
1776 was the first modern bill of rights, since it was the first
to use a written constitution to insulate individual rights from
the changing winds of legislative fancy." Schwartz writes at
length of Founding Father George Mason's pivotal role in the
drafting and adoption of the V