<Tr> <Td> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> </Td> </Tr> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> <P> Incorporation, in U.S. law, is the process by which American courts have applied portions of the U.S. Bill of Rights to the states . When it was first ratified, the Bill of Rights only protected the rights it enumerated from federal infringement, but it had no authority over state and local governments . However, in the post-Civil War era, beginning in 1897 with Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad v. City of Chicago, various portions have been held to be incorporated against state and local government through the Fourteenth Amendment . </P> <P> Prior to the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment and the development of the incorporation doctrine, the Supreme Court in 1833 held in Barron v. Baltimore that the Bill of Rights applied only to the federal, but not any state governments . Even years after the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court in United States v. Cruikshank (1876) still held that the First and Second Amendment did not apply to state governments . However, beginning in the 1920s, a series of United States Supreme Court decisions interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment to "incorporate" most portions of the Bill of Rights, making these portions, for the first time, enforceable against the state governments . </P>

The supreme court applies the bill of rights at the state level through a process known as