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Incorporation means applying the US Constitution's Bill of Rights to the States to protect people's rights.
The Bill of Rights originally regulated only the actions of the federal government, and did not apply to the states. Each state had its own constitution, and all state constitutions included a bill of rights, many of which mirrored the language of the US Constitution, and some of which afforded greater freedoms.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Supreme Court often ruled in favor of state law when they were presented with cases that contradicted the first nine amendments (the 10th doesn't really confer any rights).
After the Civil War, the US government decided it needed a way to enable Reconstruction and supplement the Civil Rights Act of 1866, so Congress created the 14th Amendment, ratified by the States in July 1868. The Fourteenth Amendment was written in a way that could have forced the States to uphold the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution, but the Supreme Court decided not interpret it that way.
Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875 to prevent businesses from discriminating against people, but the US Supreme Court declared the Act unconstitutional. They held the Fourteenth Amendment didn't give Congress authority to regulate private entities.
Some historians believe that the Fourteenth Amendment was meant to require States to follow the entire Bill of Rights (Total Incorporation), but others claim the individual Amendments were designed to be incorporated selectively. The Supreme Court has followed the doctrine of selective incorporation, upholding individual clauses within each Amendment only when they were relevant to cases before the Court and the justices thought the individual rights outweighed the states' rights.
As of 2010, some parts of the Bill of Rights remain unincorporated, such as the Third, Seventh, one clause of the Fifth, and part of the Eighth. The Second Amendment (right to bear arms) was not incorporated to the States until June 2010. Prior to the Supreme Court decision in McDonald v City of Chicago,(2010) States had the right to make their own regulations about owning and using guns.
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Which theory of incorporation holds that the fourteenth amendment applied to the entire bill of rights to the states?
Total or Mechanical Incorporation (sometimes also called complete incorporation), which was championed by Justice Hugo Black. The US Supreme Court uses "selective incorporation," however.For more information, see Related Questions, below.
Who anexed Hawaii?
If you mean who, then the USA. If you mean whom, then the US government under William McKinley.
Did the US Supreme Court apply the entire Bill of Rights to the states under doctrine of Total Incorporation?
No. The US Supreme Court used the doctrine of "Selective Incorporation" to apply the Bill of Rights to the States on a clause-by-clause basis, as they became relevant to cases before the Court.
What are the concepts of total incorporation and selective incorporation as they relate to the Bill of Rights?
Total incorporation (sometimes called "mechanical incorporation") would apply the first eight amendments of the Bill of Rights (the Ninth and Tenth aren't individual rights; the Ninth isn't triable) to the states as a single unit via the Fourteenth Amendment, as some constitutional scholars argue was the original intent.Selective incorporation applies individual clauses within the Bill of Rights as the need arises due to US Supreme Court decisions. This has left certain portions of the first eight amendments, including the Second and Seventh Amendments in their entirety, under state government control. Second Amendment incorporation was recently challenged in McDonald v. Chicago, (2010); the Court is expected to make a determination on the matter by the end of June 2010.For more information, see Related Questions, below.
What principle of incorporation does the US Supreme Court use?
The US Supreme Court uses "Selective Incorporation" to apply individual clauses within the Bill of Rights to the States via the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process or Equal Protection Clauses.Some historians hold that the 14th Amendment required states to adhere to the Bill of Rights, in toto, while others claim the individual amendments were designed to be incorporated selectively.Total or Mechanical Incorporation (sometimes also called complete incorporation), the method championed by Justice Hugo Black, would have used the Fourteenth Amendment to apply the entire Bill of Rights to the States at one time. The US Supreme Court has chosen to use "selective incorporation," however. The principle of selective incorporation upholds or rejects as inapplicable individual clauses within each Amendment when they are considered relevant to a case before the Court.For more information, see Related Questions, below.
