The American and English Encyclopedia of Law, Volume 6

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John Houston Merrill, Thomas Johnson Michie, Charles Frederic Williams, David Shephard Garland
E. Thompson, 1888

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Page 46 - By the law of the land is most clearly intended the general law; a law which hears before it condemns; which proceeds upon inquiry, and renders judgment only after trial.
Page 50 - The fact that the right involved is of such a character that it cannot be denied without violating those " fundamental principles of liberty and justice which lie at the base of all our civil and political institutions
Page 46 - It is manifest that it was not left to the legislative power to enact any process which might be devised. The article is a restraint on the legislative as well as on the executive and judicial powers of the government, and cannot be so construed as to leave congress free to make any process "due process of law,
Page 49 - ... *law,' respect must be had to the cause and object of the taking, whether under the taxing power, the power of eminent domain, or the power of assessment for local improvements, or none of these; and, if found to be suitable or admissible in the special case, it will be adjudged to be 'due process of law...
Page 46 - The meaning is that every citizen shall hold his life, liberty, property and immunities, under the protection of the general rules which govern society. Everything which may pass under the form of an enactment is not, therefore, to be considered the law of the land. If this were so, acts of attainder, bills of pains and penalties, acts of confiscation, acts reversing judgments, and acts directly transferring one man's estate to another, legislative judgments, decrees and forfeitures in all possible...
Page 47 - We must examine the Constitution itself to see whether this process be in conflict with any of its provisions. If not found to be so, we must look to those settled usages and modes of proceeding existing in the common and statute law of England before the emigration of our ancestors, and which are shown not to have been unsuited to their civil and political condition, by having been acted on by them after the settlement of this country.
Page 106 - The general principle on which this species of evidence is admitted, is that they are declarations made in extremity, when the party is at the point of death, and when every hope of this world is gone ; when every motive to falsehood is silenced, and the mind is induced by the most powerful considerations to speak the truth : a situation so solemn and so awful is considered by the law as creating an obligation equal to that which is imposed by a positive oath administered in a court of justice.
Page 48 - States shall deprive any person of life. liberty, or property without due process of law," can a State make anything due process of law which, by its own legislation, it chooses to declare such? To affirm this is to hold that the prohibition to the States is of no avail, or has no application where the invasion of private rights is effected under the forms of State legislation.
Page 106 - ... where the death of the deceased is the subject of the charge, and the circumstances of the death the subject of the dying declarations (2).
Page 50 - It follows that any legal proceeding enforced by public authority, whether sanctioned by age and custom, or newly devised in the discretion of the legislative power, in furtherance of the general public good, which regards and preserves these principles of liberty and justice, must be held to be due process of law.

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