Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1878

Abstract

The present purpose is to inquire whether, in the matter of the regulation of property rights and of business, legislation has not of late been occupying doubtful, possibly unconstitutional grounds. The discussion in the main must be limited to fundamental.-principles, aided by such light as legal and constitutional history may throw upon them, since the express provisions of the constitutions can give little assistance. They always contain the general guaranty of due process of law to life, liberty, and property, but in other particulars they for the most part leave protection to principles which have come from the common law. And what is due process of law can never be settled as an abstract question: it has a new phase with every new case, and judicial history shows that judges differ concerning it at the present day when peculiar cases arise, as radically as they did when ship-money was in question, and when the king's warrant was supposed by some to be sufficient justificati,on for an arrest, though it specified no cause.


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