Barron v. Baltimore: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

Barron v. Baltimore (1833) is an important U.S. Supreme Court case. The effect of the Court's decision in this case was that the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights are restrictions on the federal government alone, and that state governments are not necessarily bound by them. This decision concerned the Fifth Amendment only: some legal scholars feel that the Court's decision in this matter was too broad, and that the justices did not truly intend state governments to be exempted from the entire Bill of Rights. Recently, further Supreme Court cases have interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment to apply the bill of Rights to the states. These cases include: Gitlow v. New York (1925), Wolf v. Colorado (1949), and Gideon v. Wainwright (1963).

See also: List of United States Supreme Court cases