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due process

due process

99 4.0
Fair legal steps that follow rules and protect people from unfair loss of freedom or property
  • noun
  • /duː ˈprɒsɛs/
  • Formal
translation icon : debido proceso
  • The Court did, nonetheless, provide some insights into the due process question.
  • due process clause
  • due process of law
  • due process rights

And the people are offered due process before that rate can be taken away.

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Examples

  • The mission of my life is to bring due process back to reporting.

  • When suspects die without due process, people lose confidence in the justice system.

  • It's like, wait a minute, you know, there should be some sort of due process before you can take that kind of action.

  • What sort of due process is this?

  • So I think due process is reasonable.

  • Second, due process is resource intensive.

  • First, since a referral may lead to special education services, due process procedures must be implemented.

    Academic text (1993)
  • No person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.

  • Details for administrative hearings are given to assure that due process requirements are met.

    Academic text (1993)
  • No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.

Synonyms

due process of law
vsdue process
  • Formal
7 5.5

A rule that the government must follow fair legal steps before taking someone's life, freedom, or property

is the shorter expression used for the same legal principle

Antonyms

22 6.5

People do not follow laws and order breaks down

Surface Forms

due process singular
due processes plural

Morphology

due + process

The phrase combines 'due' (owed, proper) with 'process' (a sequence of steps), so a learner could plausibly infer it means a proper or required procedure. However, its specific legal sense — procedural protections and rights against arbitrary denial of life, liberty, or property — is a specialized, institutional meaning not fully predictable from the parts; similar legal collocations exist cross-linguistically (e.g. Spanish 'debido proceso'), making it partially but not fully transparent to a B1 learner.

Etymology

Due process may come from old law where due meant 'proper' or 'owed' and process meant the ordered 'steps' of a case. The image of following those clear steps helps explain why the phrase now means the right to a fair legal procedure.