ABSTRACT
As the previous chapter explains, the constitutional concept of due process under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments has two aspects, procedural and substantive. Procedural due process prescribes what formal processes are required of government before it can take away a substantive right of an individual. Property and liberty are substantive rights. A state can deprive a person of liberty and property but it cannot do so without employing the proper legal procedures. These legal procedures are described in considerable detail in the chapter above by the courts in Dixon v. Alabama and Goss v. Lopez. In this chapter we discuss the substantive aspect of due process, liberty and property. An Arizona court has succinctly explained the two concepts of procedural and substantive due process in this way:
The phrase “due process of law,” when applied to substantive rights, as distinguished from procedural rights, means that the state is without power to deprive a person of life, liberty or property by an act having no reasonable relation to any property governmental purpose, or which is so far beyond the necessity of case as to be an arbitrary exercise of governmental power.1
