Incorporation, in U.S. law, is the process by which American courts have applied portions of the U.S. Bill of Rights to the states. When it was first ratified, the Bill of Rights only protected the rights it enumerated from federal infringement, allowing states and local governments to abridge them. However, beginning in 1897 with Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad v. City of Chicago, various portions have been held to be incorporated against state and local government through the Fourteenth Amendment.
