Summarize the controversy generated by the U.S. Supreme Court's 1960s incorporation decisions

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The critics of incorporation charged that it destroyed federalism, interfered with local
criminal justice, and eviscerated the need for both local variety and experiments with
different solutions to problems in criminal justice administration. These critics claimed
that the great differences among the states and among federal, state, and local systems
of criminal justice demanded local control and variation.
The critics noted that federal criminal justice consisted mainly of cases involving fraud,
tax evasion, and other complex crimes. Investigation of those cases took place largely
in offices, not in the field. On the other hand, local law enforcement dealt mainly with
street crimes that bring local police in contact with violent individuals who are difficult
to deal with. As a result, the critics claimed that the Bill of Rights worked well for
federal, but not state and local, criminal justice. Also, the critics noted that since most
local police were not highly trained college graduates, as federal agents usually were,
the incorporation doctrine only worked well for the smaller number of federal criminal
cases but not for the larger number of state criminal cases.