Barron v. Baltimore

Neither the Constitution of 1787 nor the Bill of Rights, obviously, had yet been adopted.

And even after the Bill of Rights is ratified by the states, the Supreme Court, in a case called Barron v. Baltimore, which came down in 1833, the Supreme Court declared that the Bill of Rights applied only to the national government.

So in 1785 in Virginia, the state could have very unproblematically adopted the proposed bill preferencing Christianity because the United States Constitution was not in place and incorporation, so the method by which states have to respect provisions in the Bill of Rights, the incorporation of the First Amendment didn't even occur until the 1940s.

So we were a long way from states respecting the establishment of religion and allowing for free exercise.

It's interesting.

It's always been interesting to me that Barron v. Baltimore isn't in our kind of typical canon of martial opinions.

I teach it when I teach Supreme Court, but if you look at a lot of syllabi, it's not part of the It's not what's included.

I've always wondered why that is.