[tpaine]

inquest wrote:
State constitutions already had protections such as those.

---

States have always violated our constitution. See #43 & read the link:

Commentary by Jon Roland:

" --- we can see Barron as a decision like that of Dred Scott, intended to avoid a rupture among the states.
At the time the rights recognized in the Bill of Rights were being violated by state courts in the slave states, which is what laid the basis for the 14th Amendment following the Civil War.
We can see Barron as an attempt to evade a confrontation.
Barron was wrongly decided, and needs to be overturned.

[inquest]

From the link:

The argument made by Justice Marshall in his dictum in Barron is that the Constitution established only the federal government, and therefore any recognition of rights it might provide were only against that government. This argument implicitly denies that the rights are fundamental and pre-existing....

Marshall's argument doesn't deny any such thing. It simply makes the observation that the Constitution divides responsibility for protecting rights between the state and federal governments, and as part of that division of duties, does not give the federal government the power to enforce rights against state governments. That's far from saying that rights aren't fundamental.