... the point of making the Bill of Rights binding upon all state actors, at every level. "Inalienable" rights that can be violated and are unrecognized by the very people you are most likely to need their protections against are, as a practical matter, worthless.
I do see that California, big enough to be its own country, must have had a lousy set of founders if they haven't constitutionalized that a person's means of self-protection are inviolable. But what if I live in a state that has had more liberty-minded founders? Say it has an even more sharply drawn BOR than the US, what good would incorporation be to the folks in my state?
None, but in that case, it doesn't do any harm, either. The long-standing doctrine is that the Constitution as interpreted by the courts is understood to provide a minimum level of rights-protection - if states want to go farther than that, they can. The First Amendment is not the end of free-speech rights-protections, but merely the beginning, the bare minumum. Such was the reasoning in Pruneyard - you did look up the Pruneyard case, right? ;)
NutCrackerBoy wrote:
I see the first part, the devils all around you versus the far-away arch-fiends. But I don't quite see the second part.
Neat little "arch-fiends" tar baby. Congrats.
I do see that California, big enough to be its own country, must have had a lousy set of founders if they haven't constitutionalized that a person's means of self-protection are inviolable.
But what if I live in a state that has had more liberty-minded founders? Say it has an even more sharply drawn BOR than the US, what good would incorporation be to the folks in my state?
"What if" indeed?
Do you really have a problem understanding the generals point of "making the Bill of Rights binding upon all state actors, at every level"?
As he said:
" --- "Inalienable" rights that can be violated and are unrecognized by the very people you are most likely to need their protections against are, as a practical matter, worthless."
What is that you find it difficult to "see"?
~Why~ is it you find it so difficult to support compliance at the state/local level with our BOR's?