Learning ConLaw today's Academia is a bit like learning Climate Science from Algore...
LOL ! That's why you come here.
ML/NJ
Why do you think I was sleeping?
Here is how the Court saw it in a 8th Amendment case, Fox v. State of Ohio 46 U.S. 410, 434-435, 1847 WL 5973, 23 (U.S.Ohio (U.S.JanuaryTerm 1847):
Such has been the interpretation given to those amendments by this court, in the case of Barron v. The Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, 7 Pet., 243; and such indeed is the only rational and intelligible*435 interpretation which those amendments can bear, since it is neither probable nor credible that the States should have anxiously insisted to ingraft upon the federal constitution restrictions upon their own authority,-restrictions which some of the States regarded as the sine qua non of its adoption by them.
Think for a minute about what it wouild be like if Barron were decided differently. Federal power would have ascended far more quickly, without having to wind its way through the incorporation process. Is a powerful central government what was advocated for when the adoption of the Bill of Rights were being considered? So did the Justices just get it wrong again in Fox v. Ohio?