<P>--Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) </P> <P> In the 1833 case of Barron v. Baltimore, the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Bill of Rights did not apply to state governments; such protections were instead provided by the constitutions of each state . After the Civil War, Congress and the states ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, which included the Due Process Clause and the Privileges or Immunities Clause . While the Fifth Amendment had included a due process clause, the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment crucially differed from the Fifth Amendment in that it explicitly applied to the states . The Privileges or Immunities Clause also explicitly applied to the states, unlike the Privileges and Immunities Clause of Article IV of the Constitution . In the Slaughter - House Cases (1873), the Supreme Court ruled that the Privileges or Immunities Clause was not designed to protected individuals from the actions of state governments . In Twining v. New Jersey (1908), the Supreme Court acknowledged that the Due Process Clause might incorporate some of the Bill of Rights, but continued to reject any incorporation under the Privileges or Immunities Clause . </P> <P> The doctrine of incorporation has been traced back to either Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad v. City of Chicago (1897) in which the Supreme Court appeared to require some form of just compensation for property appropriated by state or local authorities (although there was a state statute on the books that provided the same guarantee) or, more commonly, to Gitlow v. New York (1925), in which the Court expressly held that States were bound to protect freedom of speech . Since that time, the Court has steadily incorporated most of the significant provisions of the Bill of Rights . Provisions that the Supreme Court either has refused to incorporate, or whose possible incorporation has not yet been addressed include the Fifth Amendment right to an indictment by a grand jury, and the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial in civil lawsuits . </P> <P> Incorporation applies both procedurally and substantively to the guarantees of the states . Thus, procedurally, only a jury can convict a defendant of a serious crime, since the Sixth Amendment jury - trial right has been incorporated against the states; substantively, for example, states must recognize the First Amendment prohibition against a state - established religion, regardless of whether state laws and constitutions offer such a prohibition . The Supreme Court has declined, however, to apply new procedural constitutional rights retroactively against the states in criminal cases (Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288 (1989)) with limited exceptions, and it has waived constitutional requirements if the states can prove that a constitutional violation was "harmless beyond a reasonable doubt ." </P>

When did the federal government decide to incorporate the bill of rights to the states