The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution

1. The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution require that one may not be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process. Define and discuss due process of the law.

The Due Process Clause serves two basic goals. One is to produce, through the use of fair procedures, more accurate results: to prevent the wrongful deprivation of interests. The other goal is to make people feel that the government has treated them fairly by, say, listening to their side of the story. The Due Process Clause is essentially a guarantee of basic fairness. Fairness can, in various cases, have many components: notice, an opportunity to be heard at a meaningful time in a meaningful way, a decision supported by substantial evidence, etc. In general, the more important the individual right in question, the more process that must be afforded. No one can be deprived of their life, for example, without the rigorous protections of a criminal trial and special determinations about aggravating factors justifying death. On the other hand, suspension of a driver's license may occur without many of the same protections.

The following case demonstrates the Supreme Court's approach to key questions concerning procedural due process. Board of Regents v Roth shows how the Court has defined "property" interests for purposes of the due process clause. The case involved the decision of a public college not to renew the contract of an untenured professor. The Court concluded that the professor had no "liberty" interest in any specific teaching job, and that he had no "property" interest in his job because he lacked "a legitimate claim of entitlement" under state law to his job. The Court noted that he would have had such a claim of entitlement had he been tenured, because then the college would have had to make a specific showing of poor performance in order to sustain its dismissal. Without a legitimate claim of entitlement to his job, the Court reasoned, there is nothing to have a hearing about. Property interests, the Court stress, must be found in the statutory or common law of the jurisdiction.

2. Under the Administrative Procedure Act, a number of general characteristics of administrative adjudicatory hearings apply broadly and are required of most federal and state agencies. Identify and discuss the essential elements of an administrative hearing.

The purpose of a hearing is to elicit the complete factual account involved in a disputed

issue. Unlike a trial court, where a judge or jury will render a decision shortly after hearing all

the evidence, an administrative judge may not issue findings and conclusions until weeks after

the hearing. The decision is, therefore, more likely to be based on the written record of the