On what date was the United States Bill of Rights ratified?

The United States Bill of Rights was ratified on December 15, 1791.

The Bill of Rights consists of the first ten amendments to the Constitution. James Madison introduced twelve proposed amendments in Congress in 1789, responding partly to Anti-Federalist concerns that the new Constitution did not sufficiently protect individual liberties.

The states ratified ten of those twelve proposals. The amendments became part of the Constitution on December 15, 1791, when Virginia’s approval supplied the required number of ratifications. The original proposed amendments about congressional apportionment and congressional pay had different outcomes; the pay proposal eventually became the Twenty-Seventh Amendment in 1992.

The Bill of Rights protects freedoms and legal guarantees involving religion, speech, press, assembly, firearms, searches, due process, and trials. It was not included in the original 1787 Constitution. Another common confusion is that the Constitution was signed in 1787, while the Bill of Rights was proposed in 1789 and ratified two years later.