Constitutional law: Individual rights - Due Process Clause

In United States constitutional law, a Due Process Clause is found in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, which prohibits arbitrary deprivation of life, liberty, or property by the government except as authorized by law.

The U.S. Supreme Court interprets these clauses broadly, concluding that they provide three protections: procedural due process (in civil and criminal proceedings); substantive due process, a prohibition against vague laws; and as the vehicle for the incorporation of the Bill of Rights.

Text.

The clause in the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides:

No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.

The clause in Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides:

...nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.

Background.

Clause 39 of Magna Carta provided:

No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.

The phrase "due process of law" first appeared in a statutory rendition of the Magna Carta in 1354 during the reign of Edward III of England, as follows:

No man of what state or condition he be, shall be put out of his lands or tenements nor taken (taken to mean arrested or deprived of liberty by the state), nor disinherited, nor put to death, without he be brought to answer by due process of law.

Drafting.

New York was the only state that asked Congress to add "due process" language to the U.S. Constitution. New York ratified the U.S. Constitution and proposed the following amendment in 1788:

o Person ought to be taken imprisoned or disseized of his freehold, or be exiled or deprived of his Privileges, Franchises, Life, Liberty or Property but by due process of Law.

In response to this proposal from New York, James Madison drafted a due process clause for Congress. Madison cut out some language and inserted the word without, which had not been proposed by New York. Congress then adopted the exact wording that Madison proposed after Madison explained that the due process clause would not be sufficient to protect various other rights:

Although I know whenever the great rights, the trial by jury, freedom of the press, or liberty of conscience, come in question in that body, the invasion of them is resisted by able advocates, yet their Magna Carta does not contain any one provision for the security of those rights, respecting which the people of America are most alarmed.