To: lepton
Not quite; Cruikshank did not involve the states' obedience to the Bill of Rights, because it was a federal law involved. What Criukshank said was that the 14th Amendment protected citizens from state actors, not private individuals. (Cruikshank et al. were accused of violating the civil rights of several black citizens, but the Court ruled that was impossible; in fact they had merely committed the more mundane crime of murder, whose prosecution was not within the authority of the United States; that was the state's job.)
To: NovemberCharlie
"13. In United States v. Cruikshank, 23 L.Ed. 588 (1875), the Court held that the Second Amendment "is one of the amendments that has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the National Government." Id. at 592. In Presser v. Illinois, 6 S.Ct. 580, 584 (1886), the Court, reaffirming Cruikshank and citing Barron v. Baltimore, 8 L.Ed. 672 (1833), held that the Second "amendment is a limitation only upon the power of congress and the national government, and not upon that of the state." And, in Miller v. Texas, 14 S.Ct. 874 (1894), the Court held, with respect to "the second and fourth amendments" that "the restrictions of these amendments operate only upon the federal power, and have no reference whatever to proceedings in state courts," citing Barron v. Baltimore and Cruikshank. As these holdings all came well before the Supreme Court began the process of incorporating certain provisions of the first eight Amendments into the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and as they ultimately rest on a rationale equally applicable to all those amendments, none of them establishes any principle governing any of the issues now before us. "
202 posted on
10/16/2001 9:16:10 PM PDT by
lepton
To: NovemberCharlie
Not quite; Cruikshank did not involve the states' obedience to the Bill of Rights, because it was a federal law involved. What Criukshank said was that the 14th Amendment protected citizens from state actors, not private individuals. (Cruikshank et al. were accused of violating the civil rights of several black citizens, but the Court ruled that was impossible; in fact they had merely committed the more mundane crime of murder, whose prosecution was not within the authority of the United States; that was the state's job.) I'm not arguing as to whether they were correct or not, but that is what they opined.
203 posted on
10/16/2001 9:17:32 PM PDT by
lepton
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson