What process was used to make the bill of rights applicable to the states?

Answer 1

The states must obey the Bill of Rights since they are part of the Constitution which is the federal law and above any other law (state, local).

Some of the amendments in the Bill of Rights even directly affect the states. Like Amendment 10, which says that anything the government did not make a law for, the state can do that for their own state. Like speed limits.

Answer 2

The process is called "selective incorporation." Selective incorporation uses the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses to apply individual clauses in the Bill of Rights to the states in order to make federal legislation and US Supreme Court decisions enforceable against and within the states.

More Information

The 14th Amendment (among others) was passed after the Civil War, and intended to give constitutional muster to the reconstruction the American south. The "due process" clause of that Amendment provides that no person shall be denied due process of the laws of the United States. The Bill of Rights are among the laws of the United States. After the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, states could no longer deny citizens the protections contained in the Bill of Rights without violating the Constitution.

Seen from this point of view, it would make sense to argue that all of the first ten Amendments was "incorporated" to the states upon ratification of the 14th Amendment. In fact, Justices Black and Douglass repeatedly made this argument. But for various reasons, that is not the approach the majority of the Court has taken. Rather, the Court has taken a step-by-step approach to incorporating the Bill of Rights. Today, most of the rights are incorporated (e.g., the First, Second, Fourth, Sixth, most of the Fifth and Eighth, the Third Amendment is incorporated to one Circuit; the Seventh is unincorporated).

For more information, see Related Questions, below.

Answer 3

The Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution did not originally apply to the states. They initially only applied to the federal government.

Answer 4

The 14th Amendment was passed after the Civil War. It gave the rights in the Federal Constitution to all citizens except convicts.

Answer 5

The Bill of Rights is an amendment to the constitution, and as such, it was ratified by the states.