Blog #5: Selective Incorporation

Selective incorporation is defined as only a selected few of something is held within the principles or definition of another thing. In government, selective incorporation is used to describe how only a few of the Bill of Rights' amendments are selected through judiciary review to be held within the 14th amendment. When the 14th amendment was passed, the American people thought that all of the Bill of Rights' amendments were incorporated into the 14th amendment, which is called total incorporation. However, the Supreme Court made decisions as though the 14th amendment had never been adopted. This followed the trend set by the Court in 1833 in the Barron v. Baltimore case, which upheld both the principle of "dual citizenship" and the principle that the Bill of Rights did not apply to decisions or to procedures of state and local governments. However, following the Quincy v. Chicago case in 1897, the Court started to selectively incorporate the Bill of Rights' amendments into the 14th amendment. One example occurs in 1925 in the Gitlow v. New York case selectively incorporated Freedom of Speech of the 1st amendment into the 14th amendment. In 1937, however, the Supreme Court shows that the Bill of Rights' amendments are selectively incorporated into the 14th amendment through the Palko v. Connecticut decision, which was that the double jeopardy clause of the 5th amendment is not incorporated into the 14th amendment.