Due Process in Law

Abstract

This article assesses the history of the concept of due process in Anglo-American jurisprudence. While the actual phrase ‘due process of law’ first appeared in the Magna Carta, the concept of due process was transformed when the American colonists adopted it as a limiting principle not only on the use of executive power but also on the scope of the laws that could be passed. Due process protects substantive rights by requiring procedural regularity in the exercise of governmental power and insists that procedural regularity may not be altered by the normal operations of political power. In the twentieth century, due process law in the United States developed in three central phases – substantive, procedural, and functional due process – and these trends continue into the twenty-first century.