Before you speak, I know what you're going to say.... something about "incorporation," which no court prior to 1947 had recognized, but suddenly found hidden in the fourteenth. In Waltz v. Tax Commission (1970), the justices even admitted that Everson v. Board of Education invented the incorporation clause out of whole cloth. Although it was speaking specifically to the Establishment clause, the ruling (Waltz v. Tax Commission) had a similar meaning for all the other amendments. It said, The Establishment Clause was not incorporated in the Fourteenth Amendment until Everson v. Board of Education was decided in 1947... The meaning of the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause [has been] made applicable to the States for only a few decades at best. (emphasis mine)
The fifth didn't need to be incorporated, because it promised protection for all people, regardless of the antagonist. Chief Justice John Marshall disagreed, and said so in the 1833 decision of Barron v. Baltimore, that the Bill of Rights only applied to the federal government. One thing I find quite interesting about that is that there wouldn't have been a need to make such a decision unless there had been a conflict in the first place, and thus serves as proof to my point that it hadn't been "considered," but legislated by the high court. Here is the linked article's conclusion:
Barron was wrongly decided, and needs to be overturned. Federal courts should not accept jurisdiction of state civil rights cases unless or until all recourse within the state courts has been exhausted, but it should accept jurisdiction over appropriate cases involving any of the rights recognized in the Bill of Rights after that has occurred, and extend all of those protections to cases between a citizen and his state. Especially important are the protections of the Second Amendment, the right to a grand jury of the Fifth, and the right not to have state officials or their agents exercise undelegated powers. (emphasis added)
Also, do not forget the Blaine amendment, submitted during the framing of the fourteenth amendment, which of all things, made an attempt to apply the first amendment to the states. It, as well as five similar amendments, were voted down. If the framers didn't intend for the fourteenth to apply the first amendment to the states, why do you think that similar proposals weren't made to incorporate the fifth, if your claim is true? Could it be that the framers thought the fifth amendment already applied to the states? There were certainly those who did, in spite of John Marshall's assertion. Here's another interesting tidbit of the above linked article regarding incorporation:
What is interesting about this, however, has been that the Supreme Court has not extended the protection of all the provisions of the Bill of Rights to the states, but has followed a doctrine of "selective incorporation", enforcing all or parts of the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments, but not the Second, Third, Seventh, Ninth, or Tenth Amendments, or part of the Fifth. The inconsistency of this selection is grammatically indefensible, and is a continuing source of constitutional difficulty.
I could go on, but why bother? You've already demonstrated a willingness to comment on my competence without having the slightest knowledge as to what research I may or may not have done, thereby reducing your arguments to ad hominem attacks. In addition, your inability or unwillingness to acknowledge the grammatically correct reading of the Bill of Rights leads me to doubt we could produce any good fruit through this debate.
Good luck and happy research.
Thomas Jefferson, in the Kentucky Resolutions, 1798:
... the Constitution of the United States, having delegated to Congress a power to punish treason, counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States, piracies, and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations, and no other crimes whatsoever; and it being true as a general principle, and one of the amendments to the Constitution having also declared, that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people," therefore the act of Congress, passed on the 14th day of July, 1798, and intituled "An Act in addition to the act intituled An Act for the punishment of certain crimes against the United States," as also the act passed by them on the -- day of June, 1798, intituled "An Act to punish frauds committed on the bank of the United States," (and all their other acts which assume to create, define, or punish crimes, other than those so enumerated in the Constitution,) are altogether void, and of no force; and that the power to create, define, and punish such other crimes is reserved, and, of right, appertains solely and exclusively to the respective States, each within its own territory.Jefferson would seem to agree with my contention that the Federal Government has no Authority to outlaw Physician assisted suicide. Even if you find scholars willing to apply the bill of rights to State action you have not attempted to show how it is legitimately applied to the actions of individuals, which was my original contention before the debate was sidetracked.
Is self-defense a violation of the Fifth Amendment unless due process of law is provided before any action is taken that results in death? I don’t think so because the Fifth Amendment applies only to official Government action that deprives someone of life, liberty or property without first giving the individual due process. While I might be convinced that there is some validity in applying that right to State action even before the Fourteenth Amendment was passed it really has no bearing on the question of action taken by an individual to end his own life.