Government’s job would be to bring such malefactors to justice and impose punishment on them. The idea was that the monopoly force of government was needed to suppress the likes of murderers, rapists, robbers, and other violent criminals. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson set forth the rationale for the establishment of government in a society: to secure the fundamental, inherent, and preexisting rights of the people.
Over the centuries, that phrase - “the law of the land” - gradually evolved into the phrase “due process of law,” the same phrase our American ancestors insisted be made part of the Constitution through the adoption of the Fifth Amendment.
#THE RIGHT TO DUE PROCESS FREE#
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 judgement of his equals or by the law of the land. Included among the restrictions on power to which King John acceded in the Magna Carta - the Great Charter - was a prohibition against the exercise of arbitrary seizure of people or their property by government officials: be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”ĭue process of law actually stretches back to the year 1215, when the great barons of England extracted an admission from their king that his powers over the citizenry were not unlimited but instead were limited by fundamental principles of fairness and justice. One of the most deeply rooted principles in American jurisprudence is the concept of due process of law, which is enshrined in the Fifth Amendment to the U.S.
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