How does the 14th amendment provide thread coverage for state and local compliance with the bill of rights?
The 14th Amendment’s principles of equal protection of the law and guarantee of due process of the law mirrored those that are contained in the Bill of Rights. When the 14th Amendment was adopted after the Civil War it was aimed at attempting to ensure the legal equality of the races, and it was aimed at the state. The Bill of Rights had been in existence for decades and there was a lot of case law at the federal level exploring what its terms mean. As 14th Amendment cases came before the federal courts, the examples they had of similar cases were centered on the Bill of Rights. Over the years, this resulted in the gradual incorporation of the legal standards imposed on the federal government by the Bill of Rights into the courts’ interpretation of the legal standards imposed on the states by the post-Civil War amendments.
