Editing Openai/695c860c-fb24-8010-a014-a687d2d61cb3 (section)

=== Assistant: I reviewed the opening pages of your Petition to the Supreme Court and verified that it quotes and attacks the doctrine… ===
I reviewed the opening pages of your Petition to the Supreme Court and verified that it quotes and attacks the doctrine of selective incorporation as “arbitrary” and a fabrication that improperly narrows the binding force of the Bill of Rights on the states. The petition explicitly asserts that “…arbitrary selective incorporation is a false doctrine on its face” and criticizes how rights have been “dismantled” when, in your view, they were always directly binding on the states under the original Constitution or via the Fourteenth Amendment’s original meaning. Supreme Court<ref>{{cite web|title=Supreme Court|url=https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/24-7354/362301/20250605105125738_20250605-104518-00004010-00000301.pdf|publisher=Supreme Court|access-date=2026-01-09}}</ref>

Here’s how the mainstream historical and legal understanding differs from the argument you’re making — with citations to reliable sources:

===== - The U.S. Supreme Court held in Barron v. Baltimore (1833) that the Bill of Rights constrained only the federal government, not state governments. This was longstanding doctrine before the Fourteenth Amendment. Wikipedia<ref>{{cite web|title=Wikipedia|url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_Rights|publisher=en.wikipedia.org|access-date=2026-01-09}}</ref> =====
* For decades after the Civil War, the Supreme Court continued to hold that the Bill of Rights as originally written did not automatically apply to the states — e.g., United States v. Cruikshank (1876) reaffirmed that the First and Second Amendments did not apply against state actors. Congress.gov<ref>{{cite web|title=Congress.gov|url=https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB11242|publisher=congress.gov|access-date=2026-01-09}}</ref>

So the idea that the Bill of Rights was always binding on the states is not supported by early Supreme Court precedent — a point that has stood uncontroversially in American constitutional history before the incorporation doctrine was formulated.

===== - After the Civil War and ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, litigants argued that the Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause or Due Process Clause should extend Bill of Rights protections to the states. EveryCRSReport<ref>{{cite web|title=EveryCRSReport|url=https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/LSB11242.html|publisher=everycrsreport.com|access-date=2026-01-09}}</ref> =====
* But in Slaughter-House Cases (1873), the Court interpreted the Privileges or Immunities Clause so narrowly that it did not include the rights in the Bill of Rights — effectively rejecting total incorporation through that clause. EveryCRSReport<ref>{{cite web|title=EveryCRSReport|url=https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/LSB11242.html|publisher=everycrsreport.com|access-date=2026-01-09}}</ref>

Thus, the Supreme Court quite deliberately rejected total incorporation, meaning all rights automatically applied, and instead developed selective incorporation doctrine as its solution to a constitutional question that was unresolved in the text itself.

===== - From around the 1920s through the 1960s, the Supreme Court gradually held that certain rights in the Bill of Rights were “fundamental to the concept of ordered liberty” and thus binding on the states through the Due Process Clause. Congress.gov<ref>{{cite web|title=Congress.gov|url=https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/LSB11242|publisher=congress.gov|access-date=2026-01-09}}</ref> =====
* This case-by-case approach became known as selective incorporation, where the Court determines which individual rights are “fundamental” enough to warrant application against the states. Civics Supreme Court History<ref>{{cite web|title=Civics Supreme Court History|url=https://civics.supremecourthistory.org/article/selective-incorporation/|publisher=Civics Supreme Court History|access-date=2026-01-09}}</ref>

So while some commentators criticize this as judicial invention (and your petition echoes that critique), it’s not a post-hoc smokescreen: it’s a well-documented judicial methodology developed to address a genuine textual and historical ambiguity in the Constitution.

===== - Almost all of the core protections in the first eight Amendments have now been incorporated — e.g., freedom of speech, free exercise, unreasonable searches and seizures, right to counsel, etc. EveryCRSReport<ref>{{cite web|title=EveryCRSReport|url=https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/LSB11242.html|publisher=everycrsreport.com|access-date=2026-01-09}}</ref> =====
* Some provisions remain unincorporated, like the Third Amendment’s quartering clause and the Fifth Amendment’s grand jury clause (because the Court has not yet found them “fundamental” under current doctrine). Wikipedia<ref>{{cite web|title=Wikipedia|url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_Rights|publisher=en.wikipedia.org|access-date=2026-01-09}}</ref>

This is exactly the “selective” aspect — not total and not none, but rights assessed and applied one at a time based on a judicial test.

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If you’d like, I can summarize the classic constitutional arguments for total incorporation via the Privileges or Immunities Clause (as advanced by scholars and some modern justices like Thomas and others) and compare them with the mainstream incorporation doctrine. Just let me know if want that.