To Protect and Maintain Individual Rights: A Citizen's Guide to the Washington Constitution, Article I

In To Protect and Maintain Individual Rights, Jonathan Bechtle and Michael Reitz provide a section by section analysis of the Washington Constitution’s Declaration of Rights. The authors review the state’s 1889 constitutional debates, contemporary accounts of the convention, and significant cases that have dealt with the rights guaranteed in the Washington Constitution. The book includes a foreword by Washington Supreme Court Justice Charles Johnson.

 

A 2006 survey found that only twenty-five percent of Americans can name more than one freedom protected by the First Amendment. Twenty percent of those polled actually thought the right to own a pet was protected. Yet more than half of these adults could name at least two characters from a popular television cartoon. If familiarity with the U.S. Constitution is lacking, awareness of the provisions of the state constitution is deplorable.

 

Bechtle and Reitz urge citizens to become familiar with their state constitution, as individual rights are often afforded greater protection from the state constitution than from the U.S. Constitution. “When citizens are educated in the sources of their freedoms, and familiar with attempts in history to limit these freedoms, they are better equipped to recognize new encroachments.”