Dec. 13, 2006 -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt first began speaking about our country's need for economic and social rights to compliment the political rights granted to us in our original Bill of Rights during his first campaign for President, in 1932.

Though his whole twelve year Presidency and four presidential campaigns centered largely on advocating for and implementing those rights, it wasn't until his January 11th, 1944, State of the Union address to Congress that he fully enumerated his conception of those rights in what he referred to as a "Second Bill of Rights". The elements of that conception fall into two major categories – opportunity and security. Here is a partial introduction to and list of FDR's Second Bill of Rights, as enumerated in his 1944 State of the Union address:

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual
freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.
Necessitous men are not free men. People who are hungry and out of a
job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-
evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights
under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be
established for all – regardless of station, race, or creed. Among
these are:
Opportunity
• The right to a useful and remunerative job…
• The right to a good education.
• The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies…
Security
• The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment.
• The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.
• The right of every family to a decent home.
• The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation.

Unfortunately, as discussed by Cass R. Sunstein, Professor of Jurisprudence at Chicago School of Law, in his book, "The Second Bill of Rights – FDR's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need it More Than Ever", FDR's Second Bill of Rights has to this day only been partially implemented in the United States. Sunstein discusses in his book the history of the Second Bill of Rights (pre-FDR, FDR, and post-FDR), why he believes that it has not yet been fully implemented in the United States (despite the fact that many other countries have implemented it to a much greater degree), and why we need it:

Attitudes of our Founding Fathers towards economic and social rights

Though economic and social rights were included neither in our original Constitution nor in subsequent amendments to our Constitution, Sunstein points out that our Founding Fathers nevertheless considered the importance of these rights to a democracy. For example, James Madison recommended the following as being important to the preservation of democracy:

… By withholding unnecessary opportunities from a few, to increase
the inequality of property, by an immoderate, and especially an
unmerited accumulation of riches; by the silent operation of laws,
which, without violating the laws of property, reduce extreme
wealth to a state of mediocrity, and raise indigence toward a
state of comfort.

And Thomas Jefferson saw the situation in similar terms (http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=967):

The consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much
misery to the bulk of mankind, legislatures cannot invest too many
devices for subdividing property… Another means of silently
lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from
taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of
property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there
is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is
clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to
violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for
man to labor and live on.

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