<P> In the 1940s and 1960s the Supreme Court gradually issued a series of decisions incorporating several of the specific rights from the Bill of Rights, so as to be binding upon the States . A dissenting school of thought championed by Justice Hugo Black supported that incorporation of specific rights, but urged incorporation of all specific rights instead of just some of them . Black was for so - called mechanical incorporation, or total incorporation, of Amendments 1 through 8 of the Bill of Rights (Amendments 9 and 10 being patently connected to the powers of the state governments). Black felt that the Fourteenth Amendment required the States to respect all of the enumerated rights set forth in the first eight amendments, but he did not wish to see the doctrine expanded to include other, unenumerated "fundamental rights" that might be based on the Ninth Amendment . Black felt that his formulation eliminated any arbitrariness or caprice in deciding what the Fourteenth Amendment ought to protect, by sticking to words already found in the Constitution . Although Black was willing to invalidate federal statutes on federalism grounds, he was not inclined to read any of the first eight amendments as states' rights provisions as opposed to individual rights provisions . Justice Black felt that the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to apply the first eight amendments from the Bill of Rights to the states, as he expressed in his dissenting opinion in Adamson v. California . This view was again expressed by Black in his concurrence in Duncan v. Louisiana citing the Fourteenth Amendment's Privileges or Immunities Clause: "' No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States' seem to me an eminently reasonable way of expressing the idea that henceforth the Bill of Rights shall apply to the States ." </P> <P> Justice Felix Frankfurter, however, felt that the incorporation process ought to be incremental, and that the federal courts should only apply those sections of the Bill of Rights whose abridgment would "shock the conscience," as he put it in Rochin v. California (1952). Such a selective incorporation approach followed that of Justice Moody, who wrote in Twining v. New Jersey (1908) that "It is possible that some of the personal rights safeguarded by the first eight Amendments against National action may also be safeguarded against state action, because a denial of them would be a denial of due process of law . If this is so, it is not because those rights are enumerated in the first eight Amendments, but because they are of such a nature that they are included in the conception of due process of law ." The due process approach thus considers a right to be incorporated not because it was listed in the Bill of Rights, but only because it is required by the definition of due process, which may change over time . For example, Moody's decision in Twining stated that the 5th Amendment right against self - incrimination was not inherent in a conception of due process and so did not apply to states, but was overruled in Malloy v. Hogan (1964). Similarly, Justice Cardozo stated in Palko v. Connecticut (1937) that the right against double jeopardy was not inherent to due process and so does not apply to the states, but that was overruled in Benton v. Maryland (1969). Frankfurter's incrementalist approach did carry the day, but the end result is very nearly what Justice Black advocated, with the exceptions noted below . </P> <P> Some have suggested that the Privileges or Immunities Clause would be a more appropriate textual basis than the due process clause for incorporation of the Bill of Rights . It is often said that the Slaughter - House Cases "gutted the privileges or immunities clause" and thus prevented its use for applying the Bill of Rights against the states . In his dissent to Adamson v. California, however, Justice Hugo Black pointed out that the Slaughter - House Cases did not directly involve any right enumerated in the Constitution: </P> <P> (T) he state law under consideration in the Slaughter - House cases was only challenged as one which authorized a monopoly, and the brief for the challenger properly conceded that there was "no direct constitutional provision against a monopoly ." The argument did not invoke any specific provision of the Bill of Rights, but urged that the state monopoly statute violated "the natural right of a person" to do business and engage in his trade or vocation . </P>

When did the bill of rights begin to be enforced at the state level