loosecannon
Senior Member
- May 7, 2007
- 4,888
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Read it and weep all you alleged strict constitutionalists:
Gitlow v. New York - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
So between 1833 and 1925 the bill of rights could be suspended in the various states by state law.
Is that the conservative past you want to return to? Is that the strict constitutionalism you long for?
Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court, which ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution had extended the reach of certain provisions of the First Amendmentspecifically the provisions protecting freedom of speech and freedom of the pressto the governments of the individual states.
The Supreme Court previously held, in Barron v. Baltimore, 32 U.S. 243 (1833), that the Constitution's Bill of Rights applied only to the federal government, and that, consequently, the federal courts could not stop the enforcement of state laws that restricted the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights. Gitlow v. New York's partial reversal of that precedent began a trend toward nearly complete reversal; the Supreme Court now holds that almost every provision of the Bill of Rights applies to both the federal government and the states. The Court upheld the state law challenged in Gitlow v. New York, which made it a crime to advocate the duty, need, or appropriateness of overthrowing government by force or violence. The Court's ruling on the effects of the Fourteenth Amendment was incidental to the decision, but nevertheless established an extremely significant precedent.
As justification for its decision, the Supreme Court relied on the "due process clause" of the Fourteenth Amendment. This provision, contained in Section One of the amendment, prohibits any state from depriving "any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." Specifically, in its decision the Court stated that "For present purposes we may and do assume that" the rights of freedom of speech and freedom of the press were "among the fundamental personal rights and 'liberties' protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment from impairment by the states" (at 666). The Court would go on to use this logic of incorporation much more purposefully in other cases, such as De Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U.S. 353 (1937), Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25 (1949), and Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), to extend the reach of the Bill of Rights. Constitutional scholars refer to this process as the "incorporation doctrine," meaning that the Supreme Court incorporates specific rights into the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Gitlow v. New York - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
So between 1833 and 1925 the bill of rights could be suspended in the various states by state law.
Is that the conservative past you want to return to? Is that the strict constitutionalism you long for?