Cite as: 510 U. S. 266 (1994)
Stevens, J., dissenting
protection. As we explained in Hurtado, "bulwarks" of protection such as the Magna Carta and the Due Process Clause "guarantee not particular forms of procedure, but the very substance of individual rights to life, liberty, and property." 19
Second, and of greater importance, the cramped view of the Fourteenth Amendment taken by the plurality has been rejected time and time again by this Court. In his famous dissenting opinion in Adamson v. California, 332 U. S. 46, 89-92 (1947), Justice Black took the position that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment makes the entire Bill of Rights applicable to the States. As a corollary, he advanced a theory not unlike that endorsed today by The Chief Justice and Justice Scalia: that the express guarantees of the Bill of Rights mark the outer limit of Due Process Clause protection. Ibid. What is critical, for present purposes, is that the Adamson majority rejected this contention and held instead that the "ordered liberty" protected by the Due Process Clause is not coextensive with the specific provisions of the first eight Amendments to the Constitution. Justice Frankfurter's concurrence made this point perfectly clear:
"It may not be amiss to restate the pervasive function of the Fourteenth Amendment in exacting from the States observance of basic liberties. . . . The Amendment neither comprehends the specific provisions by which the founders deemed it appropriate to restrict the federal government nor is it confined to them. The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment has an independent potency . . . ." Id., at 66.
In the years since Adamson, the Court has shown no inclination to reconsider its repudiation of Justice Black's posi-19 Hurtado v. California, 110 U. S. 516, 532 (1884). See n. 2, supra.
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