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Benton v. Maryland, 395 U.S. 784 (1969), argued 12 Dec. 1968, reargued 24 Mar. 1969, decided 23 June 1969 by vote of 7 to 2; Marshall for the Court, Harlan and Stewart in dissent. The issue in Benton was whether the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits a state from subjecting a person to double jeopardy. The Court had confronted that precise issue thirty years earlier in Palko v. Connecticut (1937), where it ruled that the double jeopardy standard of the Fifth Amendment did not apply to the states. Rejecting the doctrine of incorporation, Palko applied the principle that the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause incorporates only those rights that are “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty” (p. 324).

In Benton the Court overruled Palko in part, holding that the double jeopardy prohibition applies to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. Most significantly, the Court rejected the Palko notion that states can deny rights to criminal defendants so long as the denial is not shocking to a universal sense of justice. Instead, the Court ruled that states must extend those guarantees in the Bill of Rights that are fundamental to the American scheme of justice.

With respect to the guarantee against double jeopardy, the Court observed that its origins can be traced to English common law, which was adopted in our country's jurisprudence. Every state has some form of the prohibition in its constitution or common law. Accordingly, the guarantee against double jeopardy is clearly among those rights that are deeply ingrained in the American system and thus made applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment.

See also Due Process, Procedural; Incorporation Doctrine.

Daan Braveman

University of Maryland at College Park; coeducational; land-grant and state supported; chartered 1856 and opened 1859 as Maryland Agricultural College, renamed Maryland State College 1916, consolidated 1920 with the professional schools of the older Univ. of Maryland (Baltimore), separated 1988 as an individual institution in what is now the University System of Maryland (see Maryland, University System of ). The Univ. of Maryland, College Park, is a major research institution with 14 colleges and schools on its campus, numerous centers and institutes, and notable programs in business, engineering, computer science, education, and journalism. It is one of the 11 colleges and universities in Maryland's higher education system and one of several Maryland institutions that share the name and heritage of the pre-1988 Univ. of Maryland, but only it is legally permitted to be known as simply the Univ. of Maryland.

Olney Theatre (Olney, Maryland). This theatre in suburban Washington, D.C., opened in 1938 as a community group and over the years has grown to professional status and has become affiliated with Boston University, the University of Maryland, and Middlebury College. Productions are staged in the 440‐seat proscenium theatre and the flexible black box Mulitz‐Gudelsky Theatre in the Olney Theatre Center for the Arts. The company's presentations of classic and original works are popular enough that the group is in the process of building a new 440‐seat theatre.