Federalist Society Annual Faculty Conference Panel: Who's Afraid of Substantive Due Process? Original Meaning and the Due Process of Law

Go Back

Session Type: Other Organization Events

Session Capacity: N/A

Hotel: Hilton New Orleans Riverside

Room: Compass

Floor: Riverside Building

Conventional wisdom holds that the original meaning of the "due process of law," used in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment, is procedural - forbidding deprivations of life, liberty or property without appropriate procedural safeguards and unless they are pursuant to a duly enacted law governing the conduct giving rise to the deprivation.  Recent originalist scholarship, however, calls this view into question, arguing that a thicker and indeed "substantive" understanding of due process is justified by a careful reading of the constitutional text and history. This panel will explore and critique these new arguments.