Opinion ID: 2333047
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Present Delaware Constitution

Text: Following the enactment of the United States Constitution and the operative effectiveness of the Bill of Rights in 1791, Delaware adopted its own new constitution in 1792. The President of the 1792 Delaware Constitutional Convention was John Dickinson, who had studied the common law of England at the Middle Temple in London with Thomas McKean and, thus, was also a contemporary of William Blackstone. [46] John Dickinson and the other framers of the 1792 Delaware Constitution clearly intended to preserve and incorporate the well-established common-law principles from the 1776 Delaware Constitution into the protections afforded by the Bill of Rights in the 1792 Delaware Constitution. Today, the first document that appears in the Delaware Code is the Magna Charta. [47] The entire Delaware Bill of Rights has remained virtually intact since those provisions were adopted in the 1792 Delaware Constitution. Article I, Section 8 of the present Delaware Constitution provides: nor shall any person's property be taken or applied to public use without the consent of his or her representatives, and without compensation being made. Although this history demonstrates that property rights are fundamental to liberty, they are not paramount. In 1798, United States Supreme Court Justice James Iredell noted that public projects are necessarily sometimes built upon the soil owned by individuals. [48] Accordingly, Justice Iredell acknowledged that private rights must yield to public exigencies. [49]