The Magna Carta has guaranteed people’s right to due process for 800 years, yet the Trump administration seeks to strip that right from our Constitution; tell the Supreme Court to uphold the Due Process Clause
By James Lobsenz
Every person is entitled to “due process of law.” But just exactly what is due process of law? President Trump says, “I don’t know, I’m not a lawyer.”
Is that an excuse for not knowing? Most people are not lawyers or legal historians. It’s true it is a technical phrase. But even so, most people have a gut feeling that it means something like “a fair hearing.” And they’d be right. That’s exactly how the Supreme Court has defined it. It means that a person has the right to “a meaningful opportunity to be heard,” and generally that means the right to be heard before government takes action against one.
The Supreme Court has held that you have the right to a hearing — the right to tell your side of the story and to be heard by a neutral judge — before government suspends your driver’s license, suspends you from school, seizes your home, or your money, or deports you to another country, as it did to Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
Where does the phrase “due process of law” come from? From the Magna Carta of 1215. Say what? Yes. It’s a right that has been continually recognized for over 800 years, first in England, and later in the United States. Fed up with King John’s tyrannical orders and actions, several barons rebelled. They marched on London. King John fled London without putting up a fight. Finally, he met with the barons and signed the “Great Charter” of legal rights that they drafted. In Article 39, King John promised that “No free-man shall be seized, or imprisoned, or dispossessed, outlawed, exiled, or in any way destroyed … except by the legal judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land.”
The ”law of the land” meant the customary legal procedures that had been observed and honored for ages. And one of those customs was the right to a hearing before government acts against you. That was a key part of the “law of the land.” A hearing was part of the process that was “due” every person.
In Noem v. Garcia, one of Trump’s lawyers (who was later fired) admitted that Garcia’s deportation “was illegal.” But they maintained that since the illegal deportation was a done deal, there was nothing any court could do to remedy it. Thus, according to the president’s lawyers, the right to due process is a hollow right for anyone who is spirited out of the country before any hearing can be held.
The right to due process is not something to be discarded after eight centuries. King Donald now claims that he can ignore a right that no English king has dared to ignore since King John. The only people with the authority to stop King Donald are the justices of the Supreme Court. Writing your representatives in Congress won’t do any good. Write the justices. Tell them to stand firm and to tell King Donald he must obey the Due Process Clause of our Constitution.
James Lobsenz is an Ashland resident.
