You cite Barron v. Baltimore, 32 U.S. 243 (1833) as proof that a private citizen cannot violate the Constitution?
No, I cite Barron v. Baltimore as a place for you to begin your research into the history of the doctrine that the Constitution as originally ratified bound only the federal government, and that the Fourteenth Amendment simply extended this situation to state governments. You can follow links and use Google as well as I can.
This I have to see. -- Please quote where Marshall takes that position in the decision.
Okay:
The constitution was ordained and established by the people of the United States for themselves, for their own government, and not for the government of the individual states. Each state established a constitution for itself, and in that constitution, provided such limitations and restrictions on the powers of its particular government, as its judgment dictated. The people of the United States framed such a government for the United States as they supposed best adapted to their situation and best calculated to promote their interests. The powers they conferred on this government were to be exercised by itself; and the limitations on power, if expressed in general terms, are naturally, and, we think, necessarily, applicable to the government created by the instrument. They are limitations of power granted in the instrument itself; not of distinct governments, framed by different persons and for different purposes.
The emphases are mine, of course, and they indicate the passages where Justice Marshall states that the limitations on power in the Constitution apply only to the government thereby created.
No, I cite Barron v. Baltimore as a place for you to begin your research into the history of the doctrine that the Constitution as originally ratified bound only the federal government, and that the Fourteenth Amendment simply extended this situation to state governments.
We had much the same discussion on 'States Rights' just the other day on a different thread. You bowed out. If you want to continue, the threads still there.
This I have to see. -- Please quote where Marshall takes that position [that a private citizen cannot violate the Constitution] in the decision.
Okay:
The constitution was ordained and established by the people of the United States for themselves, for their own government, and not for the government of the individual states. Each state established a constitution for itself, and in that constitution, provided such limitations and restrictions on the powers of its particular government, as its judgment dictated. The people of the United States framed such a government for the United States as they supposed best adapted to their situation and best calculated to promote their interests. The powers they conferred on this government were to be exercised by itself; and the limitations on power, if expressed in general terms, are naturally, and, we think, necessarily, applicable to the government created by the instrument. They are limitations of power granted in the instrument itself; not of distinct governments, framed by different persons and for different purposes.
The emphases are mine, of course, and they indicate the passages where Justice Marshall states that the limitations on power in the Constitution apply only to the government thereby created.
Which has nothing to do with the fact that a private citizen can violate the Constitution.