MEANING OF “DUE PROCESS OF LAW.”
The words “due process of law” as contained in the fourteenth amendment, and as used to define one of these guaranteed rights, mean “by the law of the land,” not the law of a county, a province, or a State, but the law of the country—the whole country. That is the law of the land, and was so understood by our forefathers as due process of law. Any other meaning given to “due process of law” as it is used in the fourteenth amendment would make it simply ridiculous and frivolous, because any State may enact a “due process of law” according to that State, by which a man’s life may be taken and from which not a single right or immunity of citizenship can protect him. Any law a State may make after the passage of this amendment for dealing with the rights of a citizen of the United States becomes wholly inoperative, because the “law of the land” must forever remain fixed as at that moment, not to be changed in regard to its citizens without a change of organic law, and for some purposes not to be even so changed.