AS is widely known, in June 2010 the Supreme Court issued its opinion in McDonald v. City of Chicago, holding that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment makes the Second Amendment binding on the states. The strong public and scholarly interest in the case is due, in large part, to the controversial nature of the right that was incorporated, but also to excitement (at least among scholars) over the first incorporation in roughly forty years. Despite this broad interest, one feature of McDonald appears to have gone so far unnoticed: the right to keep and bear arms is not the sole provision of the Bill of Rights that the opinion incorporates, for the first time, against the states. This oversight is understandable, however, because while the incorporation of the Second Amendment prompted over two hundred pages of opinions, the incorporation of the second provision, the Excessive Bail Clause of the Eighth Amendment, required only a footnote.
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