ABSTRACT
United States Attorney General Edwin Meese has complained long and loud against the basic doctrine by which the Supreme Court brought the states under the Bill of Rights. Lawyers and historians have argued ever since about whether the authors meant to apply the Bill of Rights to the states. In 1884 the court decided “due process” didn’t require states to respect the rules for a fair trial listed in the Bill of Rights. In 1925, the court considered the case of Benjamin Gitlow, a New York Communist who had been convicted of criminal anarchy for speeches and publications asserting that organized government should be overthrown by force. In 1969, the last major incorporation was made. It overruled the 1937 decision on double jeopardy and applied that right — the right not be tried twice for the same crime — to the states.
