'Due Process' Trends in Immigration Statements

Lookups for due process spiked on June 25th, 2018, following a statement made by press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders regarding policies for processing immigrants:

Just because you don’t see a judge doesn’t mean you aren’t receiving due process.

Due process had been in the news earlier in the day, since President Trump’s morning tweets that indicated that he would like to deny existing legal procedures to unauthorized immigrants, some of whom are seeking political asylum.

Due process is a fixed phrase that has been used in English since the 1400s. As with much of the language of the American legal system, it had been used in British law. It means in a general sense that “a legal case must be done in a way that protects the rights of all the people involved.”

More specifically in American law, due process is called procedural due process when it means “a course of formal proceedings (as judicial proceedings) carried out regularly, fairly, and in accordance with established rules and principles.” Substantive due process means “a requirement that laws and regulations must be related to a legitimate government interest (as crime prevention) and may not contain provisions that result in the unfair or arbitrary treatment of an individual.”

Until about 1800, the phrase was nearly always rendered as due process of the law or due process of law, which is how it appears in the U.S. Constitution in the text of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments:

No person shall be…deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law