I know that legally speaking all the lines of the US Constitution and its Amendments have the same validity and are equally binding.
That being said, considering that the first 10 Amendments (the Bill of Rights) were proposed at the same time, I would like to know if, at list symbolically, there was any meaning behind the number associated with the amendments.
For instance, the First Amendment seems clearly to be the most fundamental one in the United States Constitution. It grants the separation of church and State, free speech, free press, freedom of assembly and right to petition the government. That's the very foundation of the United States and, though not free from controversy on how these rights should be exercised, it looks like it's a common ground, at least theoretically, for the vast majority of American citizens regardless of their political preferences.
The Second Amendment, despite all the controversy that it has spawned in the last decades, also seems to be of a very high importance at the time (18th century), as the right to keep and bear arms is regarded as essential for the very maintenance of a free State (specially to protect the sovereignity of the then new nation).
I don't necessarily mean that this order would be solely a rank of "importance" (the Tenth Amendment is VERY important for the constitutional groundwork of the federation), but if there's any undelying logic behind the numbers (for example, the Ninth Amendment stands well topologically as a "conclusion" of the prevous eight, and then the Tenth Amendment closes up all of it defining the powers of the Union and of each of the States).
Is there any historical evidence that the numbering was made on purpose or is it "random"?
The short answer is probably not, though it wouldn't be precisely accurate to call the ordering "random" either.
To begin with, the term "Bill of Rights" is now standard usage for the first Ten Amendments, but this usage was not widespread until the late 19th century (occasionally, the term was used only to apply to the first eight amendments, since the 9th and 10th deal less with individual rights), and much of its role in jurisprudence really only took form in the 20th century, so it is easy to overstate the significance of the Amendments between their initial ratification in 1791 and their later importance in constitutional law. The Bill of Rights (which I will continue to use throughout) seemed of cardinal importance in the aftermath of the ratification debates, but paradoxically they seemed of less importance after their initial passage.
Madison, as the primary author said amendments, was keen to shield the new government from Anti-Federalist critiques, especially from his fellow Virginian, George Mason. It is then no surprise that Madison's primary text for inspiration was Mason's own Virginia Declaration of Rights from 1776 [1], though he also borrowed wording from the English Bill of Rights (1689) and drew on other precedents of Anglo-American law as well [2]. Madison had also had a rather dramatic shift in opinion from dismissing the need for an explicit Bill of Rights to becoming its chief legislative booster, partly because he felt his personal honor and reputation at stake in the first Congress. This is why I say the order was not entirely random, since he drew significantly on Mason as a template. However, it is also not clear that there was an established hierarchy of importance, since Madison's own ordering differed significantly from Mason's as well.
Secondly, the scheme of including "ten" amendments is an artifact of the way in which they were passed. Madison originally drew up a list of seventeen that passed the House. The Senate combined several articles and whittled the number down to twelve. The first two articles themselves were never ratified among the other ten, so what we know as the "First Amendment" was actually the Third Article passed by the Senate and then passed again by the House. Of those first two lost articles, the second was finally ratified in 1992 as the 27th Amendment. The first, having to do with Congressional Apportionment, has never been ratified.
Critically, one of Madison's other proposed Amendments, which he believed "the most valuable" of the proposals, would actually have prohibited the States, not just the federal government, from violating rights of conscience, freedom of the press, and trial by jury [3]. Because this amendment never made the cut, the Bill of Rights was not "incorporated" into the States until after the 14th Amendment, and even then only as the "equal protection" clause came to encompass the rights set down there. So if the Amendments were given an "order of importance," it could only be as a result of multiple drafts by numerous agents, any of whom might have disagreed on the ordering if pressed. Madison's own ordering is perhaps relevant, but since some of his proposals did not make the cut, it is hard to put the credit down to him alone.
[1] Virginia Declaration of Rights
[3] See Gordon Wood, Empire of Liberty, pp. 65 -72 for relevant discussion of Madison's process here
Hey there! This question was ask a while ago and got a great response:
Additionally, here’s another great post that clarifies how many amendments James Madison proposed: