The early state constitutions, as well as various documents in which the colonists set forth their claims to the enjoyment of privileges vouchsafed to British subjects by the common law of England, make reference to due process of law as a valuable safeguard of personal liberty and property rights. This phrase is said to be and no doubt is used as an equivalent of the guaranty given by King John in Magna Charta (a. d. 1215; reaffirmed by many succeeding sovereigns) that "No freeman can be taken or imprisoned or disseized or outlawed or in any other manner injured, neither will we proceed against him, unless by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land." In short "due process of law" is construed as equivalent to "the law of the land." In the federal constitution it is declared that no person "shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law" (Amend. V) and that no state shall "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws " (Amend. XIV). These limitations on the power of the federal and state governments respectively are of very wide and important application. They have already been frequently referred to in previous chapters and it only remains now to indicate their general nature and scope.

It is now well settled that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees the civil rights of all persons as against infringement by state action; while, on the other hand, it is equally well settled that the civil rights of the inhabitants of the states are within the protection of the state constitutions and laws, and that the federal guarantee applies only to infringements by the constitution or laws of a state or under the authority of the state acting through its government or officers. The provisions of the Fifth Amendment are of course applicable as limitations only on the exercise of power by the federal government.