What are landmark cases in the story of the nationalization of the Bill of Rights?

Answer 1

Its hard to give an answer as it has been a very uneven process. As of this date, there are some provisions that have not been nationalized and may never be nationalized.

Obviously, on the negative side, you have the case of Barron v. City of Baltimore (pre-14th Amendment) in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Bill of Rights did not apply to state government.

Then you had the Slaughterhouse Cases in which the U.S. Supreme Court narrowly interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment as just applying to the rights of minority racial groups and read the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment out of the Constitution.

On the positive side, you have the Scottsboro cases (Powell v. Alabama) in the early 30s applying some of the criminal protections to a state trial. Later, you have Mapp v. Ohio, applying the Fourth Amendment to a state trial.

In the 1940s, you had the flag cases involving the Jehovah Witnesses (want to say one of the key ones was West Virginia v. Barnette) which applied the First Amendment against state governments.

Obviously, given the piece by piece nature of the process, it is hard to list them all.