Due Process Clause Essay

Due Process
Many of the Bill of Rights amendments, which seem to be construed as a list of rights, rather place entire subject matters beyond the scope of Federal inquiry legislation and jurisdiction. How many rights can we say are to be counted in the First Amendment? Whereas the Third amendment, about quartering soldiers, may be counted as one, possibly because of the desire to put that abuse squarely behind us as a people, and for which reason it has played scant role in judicial history. Certainly the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment was not intended to establish as a standard the sensibilities of the colonial period. Rather, I think, it was a warning to government not to be be seen as cruel and capricious by the people. That such a warning should be needed to be stated explicitly only attests to the long history of depravity in incarcerations, ever since 1215 - the Magna Carta, a prison reform measure.
The article makes the claim that the Supreme Court's authority to enforce unenumerated rights incorporated via substantive due process is "not clear." To support this claim, it cites a single law review article. While I didn't read the entire 66 page article, at no point does it use any form of the word "enforce" in the context of questioning whether the court has the authority to hold that additional unenumerated rights are protected by the Due Process clause.
The reference in the 5th Amendment applies only to the federal government and its courts and agencies. The reference in the 14th Amendment extends protection of due process to all state governments, agencies, and courts.Due process, in the context of the United States, refers to how and why laws are enforced. It applies to all persons, citizen or alien, as well as to corporations.
The constitutional guarantee of due process of law, found in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution,prohibits all levels of government from arbitrarily or unfairly depriving individuals of their basic constitutional rights to life,liberty, and property. The DUE PROCESS CLAUSE of , 5th Amendment ratified in 1791, asserts that no person shall "bedeprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." This amendment restricts the powers of the federal government and applies only to actions by it. The Due Process Clause of the 14 Amendment ratified in 1868,declares,"[N]or shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law". This clause limits the powers of the states, rather than those of the federal government.
The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment has also been interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court in the twentieth century to incorporate protections of the Bill of Rights, so that those protections apply to the states as well as to the federal government. Thus, the Due Process Clause serves as the means whereby the Bill of Rights has become binding on state governments as well as on the federal government.