The Legal and Political Importance of Due Process.
The dictionary defines due process of law as The regular, customary, and fair administration of justice; a right guaranteed to people in the United States by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution and by state constitutions. Among other requirements, a person may be brought before a court only by regular service of process, the court must have proper grounds for exercising jurisdiction, the court and the trier of fact must be impartial, and parties must be given fair notice and an opportunity to be heard and to defend themselves in an orderly proceeding. So what does all this mean. In lay terms it states that any person in this country who is accused of a crime, due process guarantees them the right to a fair trial where the accused can meet his/her accusers in a court of law where the accused will receive an unbiased trial by their peers in order to prove their innocence.
A summons or complaint, which begins a civil lawsuit, or other means by which a court exercises jurisdiction over a person or thing or compels a person to appear and respond to a pleading. Abuse of process is an action that departs from proper legal process or the use of a legal process for an illegal or improper purpose, such as malicious or groundless issuance or service of a complaint. In this paper I will illustrate the legal and political importance of due process of law using the assigned reading from class including The penalty for hand amputation for theft in Islamic justice, the Rodney King affair, and the American Vigilante tradition. .
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The greatest case I can make for the legal and political importance of due process would be the Salem Witch Trials. Hundreds of women, and some men, were put to death just because someone pointed their finger and said he/she is a witch. If due process had come about 100 years earlier in America, those accused would have their chance to tell their side of the story.
