At Liberty law Blog, Josh Blackman (guest-blogging): The “Law of the Land” Clause of Magna Carta, the Supremacy Clause, and Judicial Review. From the introduction:
Th[e] pronouncement [in Magna Carta], that neither life, liberty, nor property can be taken except by the “judgment of his peers or by the law of the land,” is the constitutional predecessor of our Due Process Clause. This also served as a basis for some notion of judicial review. Some argue that this history provides for a substantive component of law, rather than a mere procedural aspect.
But a related thought occurred to me. What is the significance that our Supremacy Clause in Article VI, authored several years before the Due Process Clause was added, uses the phrase “Law of the Land”?
Posted at 10:23 AM