ABSTRACT
Courts have used "substantive due process" to review the actual content—the substance—of the government action or policy, particularly in economic and social policy. Within the doctrine of substantive due process, courts will scrutinize the content of the government policy, even though it may have been enacted with the required procedures of fairness. As with most American law and legal concepts, the doctrine of substantive due process originated from the English tradition of guaranteed fundamental freedoms and rights, which existed even without a written constitutional document. Substantive due process was articulated in an early case before the US Supreme Court. In the aftermath of the Civil War, one infamous case involving federal protections of rights for newly freed black Americans brought substantive due process back to the judicial forefront. With the Industrial Revolution and the expansion of government regulatory efforts, economic matters became subject to the Supreme Court's use of substantive due process.
