Law, Politics, and the Supreme Court
PLSC 3330-0011
Mr. Kobylka
Summer I 2008
Analytical Paper
The relationship between the guarantees of the Bill of Rights, the Fourteenth Amendment, and
the state governments has been the subject of significant dispute. In Adamson v. California, 332
U.S. 46 (1947), Justices of the Supreme Court addressed this issue in pointed opinions.
The positions articulated by the Justices amount to these:

Fundamental Fairness (Frankfurter) – the provisions of the Bill of Rights are not applied
to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment. That Amendment only protects rights central
to the concept of due process.

Selective Incorporation (Reed) – only the provisions of the Bill of Rights that are
“implicit in the concept of ordered liberty” apply to the states through the due process
clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Total Incorporation (Black) – the provisions of the Bill of Rights are applied to the states
by the Fourteenth Amendment. As the federal government cannot violate them, neither
may the states.

Total Incorporation Plus (Murphy) -- the provisions of the Bill of Rights are applied to
the states by the Fourteenth Amendment, but that is not all. In addition to these rights,
more general “due process” concerns require states to comply with “fundamental
standards of procedure, even if they are not specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights.
Your task here is to determine which of these positions makes the most sense (e.g., textually,
historically, and logically), explain it, and defend its constitutional correctness by critiquing the
other approaches to this question from its perspective.
Guidelines
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Papers should be typed and no more than 10pp in length.
No outside research – beyond the case opinions – is required.
Papers will be due at the beginning of class on Monday, 23 June.