As always, you can find the Dobbs v. Jackson decision here.

Paragraph 2 of 9

Sentence 2 of 3

The next sentence provides a path to understanding the previous sentence, but it also covers material that we saw in section A:

“Those Amendments originally applied only to the Federal Government, Barron ex rel. Tiernan v. Mayor of Baltimore, 7 Pet. 243, 247–251 (1833) (opinion for the Court by Marshall, C. J.), but this Court has held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment ‘incorporates’ the great majority of those rights and thus makes them equally applicable to the States. See McDonald, 561 U. S., at 763–767, and nn. 12–13.“

With citations stripped out:

“Those Amendments originally applied only to the Federal Government, [. . .] but this Court has held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment ‘incorporates’ the great majority of those rights and thus makes them equally applicable to the States.”

Split into three separate claims:

1. “Those Amendments originally applied only to the Federal Government”
2. “[T]his Court has held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment ‘incorporates’ the great majority of those rights.”
3. This incorporation “makes [the first eight Amendments] equally applicable to the States.”

The first claim in this sentence identifies the beginning point:

“Those Amendments originally applied only to the Federal Government”

The citation at the comma points us to Barron v. Mayor of Baltimore—a case from 1833 that declares exactly this position. Here’s Barron on page 247:

“ The Constitution was ordained and established by the people of the United States for themselves, for their own government, and not for the government of the individual States. Each State established a constitution for itself, and in that constitution provided such limitations and restrictions on the powers of its particular government as its judgment dictated. The people of the United States framed such a government for the United States as they supposed best adapted to their situation and best calculated to promote their interests. The powers they conferred on this government were to be exercised by itself, and the limitations on power, if expressed in general terms, are naturally, and we think necessarily, applicable to the government created by the instrument. They are limitations of power granted in the instrument itself, not of distinct governments framed by different persons and for different purposes.

“If these propositions be correct, the fifth amendment must be understood as restraining the power of the General Government, not as applicable to the States.”

So to the extent that the Barron decision reflects the reality of 1833, this claim is true. The second claim is a restatement of ideas from the third paragraph of section A, which I touched on in the Dobbs Sentences # 8 post. Here’s the claim in the current sentence:

“[T]his Court has held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment ‘incorporates’ the great majority of those rights.”

Here’s the quote I pulled earlier from the McDonald v. Chicago decision making the same point:

“An alternative theory regarding the relationship between the Bill of Rights and §1 of the Fourteenth Amendment was championed by Justice Black. This theory held that §1 of the Fourteenth Amendment totally incorporated all of the provisions of the Bill of Rights.

“As Justice Black noted, the chief congressional proponents of the Fourteenth Amendment espoused the view that the Amendment made the Bill of Rights applicable to the States and, in so doing, overruled this Court’s decision in Barron. [. . .] Nonetheless, the Court never has embraced Justice Black’s “total incorporation” theory.

“While Justice Black’s theory was never adopted, the Court eventually moved in that direction by initiating what has been called a process of “selective incorporation,” i.e., the Court began to hold that the Due Process Clause fully incorporates particular rights contained in the first eight Amendments.

And that McDonald quote also supports the third claim in this sentence:

This incorporation “makes [the first eight Amendments] equally applicable to the States.”

So we have three claims in this sentence, and all three are true:

• “Those Amendments originally applied only to the Federal Government”
• “[T]his Court has held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment ‘incorporates’ the great majority of those rights.”
• This incorporation “makes [the first eight Amendments] equally applicable to the States.”