The Constitution Of The United States - 1552 Words

The Constitution of the United States has governed this country for over 200 years. The Bill of Rights, also known has the first Ten Amendments of the Constitution, has protected the unalienable rights of citizens in the United State. Selective incorporation was used in order to nationalize the Bill of Rights and protect the immunities, rights, and privileges of all United States citizens within the states. The success of Selective Incorporation, along with the 14th Amendment, ensured that states could not put in place any laws that took away the constitutional rights of American citizens that are preserved in the Bill of Rights. Although the 14th Amendment was not taken seriously for almost a century, the Selective Incorporation process†¦show more content†¦The Fourteenth Amendment prevented the states from limiting the rights granted to citizens in the Constitution and did not allow the states to enforce their own law. This amendment was nationalized through a process of S elective Incorporation. The purpose of Selective Incorporation was to, not only nationalize the Bill of Rights, but to also protect the immunities, rights, and privileges of all United States citizens. The first eight amendments were ‘selected’ and ‘incorporated’ into the Fourteenth Amendment, and through the Fourteenth Amendment, these amendments were nationalized. Through several court cases and rulings, the Bill of Rights were brought into the national spotlight and became protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, which was ratified into the Constitution in 1868. The confusion of whether or not the Bill of Rights applied to solely the National Government began with the Supreme Court ruling in 1833, Barron v. Baltimore, saying that the Bill of Rights only applied on a national level when dealing with governments and did not apply to the states. The ruling of this Supreme Court case was used in order to urge the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. In the concluding ruling, it was â€Å"declared that its ‘privileges and immunities’ clause included ‘the personal rights guaranteed and secured by the first eight amendments to