Due Process Clause

The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution each contain a due process clause. Due process deals with the administration of justice and thus the due process clause acts as a safeguard from arbitrary denial of life, liberty, or property by the Government outside the sanction of law. The Supreme Court of the United States interprets the clauses more broadly because these clauses provide four 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. Due process ensures the rights and equality of all citizens.

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 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.

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:

[N]o Person ought to be taken imprisoned or disseised 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:

...
Wikipedia