The 1st
 

The 1st is getting trampled all over by Hate Speech laws and PC laws pushed in colleges.

Short Answer--No.

The only amendments from the bill of rights that apply to the states are those that have been so deemed by the Supreme Court, via the Incorporation Doctrine. For example, I believe that the 3rd Amendment has not yet been applied to the states. So, could Missouri force citizens to house state soldiers without compensation? As of now, yes.

And, as of now, the 2nd Amendment has not yet been applied/"Incorporated" by the Supreme Court to the states either. That is the issue in this Chicago case. If the 2nd Amendment does not apply to the states, the city of Chicago, or state of Illinois, can do whatever they want regarding gun control, because the 2nd Amendment does not apply to them, only to the Federal government.

IMHO, the Supreme Court's selective incorporation of only select amendments of the bill of rights smacks of judicial legislation. However, many supreme court observers are predicting that this selective "Incorporation Doctrine" will be stricken in this case. Probably/possibly, the result will be that every amendment from the Bill of Rights will now apply to the States.

However, predicting what the Supreme Court will do is a very inexact science.

Should academic institutions (private or public) have the discretion to limit what types of speech may and may not be had on their premises? :confused:

Back in the 1990s, a certain university in southern California forbade activists from having pro-union demonstrations on campus just as it would not allow religious activists to seek converts.

IMO, these policies were vastly superior to the 'anything goes' approach at the flagship campus of the University of California system.

Far be it for me to speak for the Reaper but I believe that was a rhetorical question. The first nine rights in the Bill of Rights should have been incorporated to the states the day it was ratified, as that was the intention of the 14th Amendment.

The Supreme Court in the Slaughterhouse case decided that the plain meaning of the phrase and the clear intentions of the 14th Amendment didn't mean what it really meant. The result is that it has taken almost 140 years to get most of the Bill of Rights applied to the states. Hopefully the second amendment will take it's rightful place among the other incorporated rights shortly.

I disagree. If there is any place where the free exchange of ideas is to be promoted and protected it should be at institutions of higher learning. Sadly, it appears that only the ideas held dear by the left in this country are immune from the campus thought police.

What speech is speech?
 

Anything that the institution wishes to write down is fine with me - as long as it is applied to all.

But it would seem that "Free Speech" only applies to the PC crowd.

Oral argument transcript here.

Ginsburg
 

Ginsburg - just had to get her free societies that rejected guns - world view - into an argument about our constitution.

From my understanding, the Bill of Rights were only included as amendments at the insistence of the Anti-Federalists like Patrick Henry who were concerned about a strong central government encroaching on the states sovereignty.
The Federalists opposed the inclusion of a Bill of Rights as they considered the Constitution, as a document defining and limiting the federal government, enough to protect those rights. They thought the rights natural and assured and that the people would never allow them to be abridged or denied.

Since the Constitution defined what the federal government could NOT do and the Bill of Rights are meant to protect those specific rights addressed, it has no direct bearing on the states. The states powers are defined by their constitutions and if the citizens of those states allow their legislators to restrict their liberties, that is up to them.

I think the the 14th Am was an effort to assert the rights in the Bill of Rights as natural rights that cannot be restricted by the states. And, in my opinion, goes against the intent of the Constitution as the federal government is then asserting power over the states even if in the name of protecting liberty.

I think it's a poor argument, our rights are unalienable, given by our (your) creator. One of the primary reasons the US government was created was protect those Unalienable rights, to ensure the states don't violate people's unalienable rights. I wish we could start transferring our lovely law schools to China: they would be destroyed within the next 100 years, easy, not a shot fired...:cool:

Not at all. The central (Federal) government was created to be the voice of the collection or Union of states. The individual states were meant to be the principle government of their citizens with the Federal government only seeing to business that was common to all of the states.

The federal government was certainly not created to protect the citizens from the states.

The 2nd Am, actually just the idea of an individual's right to be armed, should be undeniable. However, the 2nd Am as written into the Constitution has nothing to do with the states because the the Constitution only defines the powers of the federal government; nothing more.

Maybe. Until the 14th amendment was passed.

I doubt that the 1st Amendment can be attacked much further.
MSM has tested and retested continously that boundry and won each time.

It is easily argued that the Due process clause in the 14th amendment.
Will uphold the rights garunteed by the 2nd amendment.

In this case a city wishes to take away the right garunteed by the 2nd amendment. In Heller vs Washington, SCOTUS upheld that right on the Federal level. I believe it is easily argued that under 'due process' garunteed in the 14th amendment that the Justices have little choice but to uphold my 2nd Amendment rights on the state level as they have on the Federal level.

Of course I could be wrong, its just my non lawyer civilian opinion.

AM:munchin