What does 'Incorporation' mean in relation to the Bill of Rights?

Incorporation refers to the legal doctrine that applies the protections of the Bill of Rights to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. Initially, the Bill of Rights was designed to limit only the federal government. However, through various Supreme Court rulings, most of the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights have been made applicable to state governments as well.

The process of incorporation began with cases such as Gitlow v. New York, which established that freedoms of speech and press are protected against state infringement, and continued with subsequent cases that included rights like the right to counsel and the right to a fair trial. This means that individual states can no longer infringe upon these rights as outlined in the Bill of Rights, thus ensuring citizens are protected at both the federal and state levels.

The other options are not accurate representations of incorporation. Making the Bill of Rights applicable to federal law is unnecessary since the federal government was always bound by the Bill of Rights. The amendment process for rights does not relate to the concept of incorporation, which focuses specifically on applying existing rights to the states. Finally, an exclusion of certain rights for states contradicts the essence of incorporation, which seeks to ensure that fundamental rights are upheld consistently across all jurisdictions,