What are the first ten amendments to the Constitution called?

The first ten amendments to the Constitution are referred to as the Bill of Rights. This term encompasses the essential liberties and protections that these amendments guarantee to individuals, including freedoms of speech, religion, and the press, as well as rights related to criminal proceedings and the protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The Bill of Rights was introduced to address the concerns of Anti-Federalists who feared that the new national government would overreach and infringe upon individual liberties. By incorporating these amendments into the Constitution, the framers sought to ensure that the rights of citizens were clearly delineated and protected from government intervention.

In contrast, the other terms mentioned relate to different sets of amendments or historical contexts. For example, the Civil Rights Amendments focus on post-Civil War changes aimed at ensuring equality and protecting the rights of former slaves, while the Reconstruction Amendments specifically refer to the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments that abolished slavery and established citizenship and voting rights. Founding Amendments is not a commonly used term, and it does not accurately describe the foundational legal protections for individual rights encapsulated in the first ten amendments.