So much has changed with how the Constitution is used today that todays Americans simple do not understand how it was intended to be used. I was watching Inherit the Wind yesterday about the 1925 Scopes Trial in Tennessee. At one point Spencer Tracy's character, the defense lawyer, said his client had a basic right to express his beliefs according to the U.S. Constitution. The judge commented that this was not a Constitutional matter, since his court was not a Federal Court.

Before the 1940s, 50s and 60s where it really became a practice of the Supreme Court to force upon the States, the Bill of Rights was a Federal mandate only, the States did not have to recognize any of it.