Dean Poling

Due process of law is an American commandment so important, it’s stated twice in the Constitution.

The Fifth Amendment guarantees no one can be “deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.”

The 14th Amendment ensures the exact same words again: No one shall be “deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.” 

To refute due process of the law is to refute an essential idea of being an American. Anything else is un-American.

Due process of the law basically means a person gets their day in court. It means neither a king, nor a president, nor anyone else can imprison a person without legal review. Due process basically means a person has a right to a fair trial.

The concept is older than our nation with roots in 13th century England with the Magna Carta, a document that sought fair balance between the king, the church and feudal lords.

In America, the concept of due process is older than the Constitution and the United States.

Prior to the American Revolution, John Adams took an unpopular stand.

He sided with the rule of law – with due process – rather than mob rule or the rule of one man.

Before he was a founding father, a shaper of independence, the second president of the United States, Adams stood for the idea of American representation in Britain, or independence if the colonies were not granted legislative representation in parliament.  

He did not foment violence or mob rule. When a mob pushed back against British forces, Adams stood by the law. Even though such an act could have caused him and his family social, financial and physical ruin.  

On March 5, 1770, several Boston residents taunted a British soldier. The Bostonians grew to a crowd of several hundred people. Eight musket-wielding British soldiers joined their besieged comrade. The mob surged. The soldiers fired their muskets. Five colonists died.  

The incident is known as the Boston Massacre.  

John Adams was a colonist and a young Boston attorney at the time. He took the thankless job of defending the British soldiers.  

Samuel Adams, his cousin, referred to the incident as “bloody butchery.” Pamphlets described the incident as the murder of innocents. Though an unpopular position, John Adams felt compelled to defend the British soldiers.  

His reason: No man in a free country should be denied a fair trial. No one should be denied due process of the law. No one.

Adams vigorously defended the soldiers. The captain was acquitted of ordering the men to shoot. Six British soldiers were acquitted. Two received a manslaughter conviction.

John Adams’ reward: He reportedly lost half of his Boston law practice.  

Still, Adams became one of the nation’s leading patriots ensuring American independence. He nominated George Washington for commander of American forces. He encouraged Thomas Jefferson to pen the Declaration of Independence. He served as Washington’s vice president, before becoming the second president.

Adams set the precedent of peacefully handing over the reins of power when he lost his presidential reelection bid to then-political rival Thomas Jefferson.  

But Adams also was the president who signed the Alien and Sedition Acts into law in 1798. The Alien Act granted the president authority to silence his critics in the press and “unilateral authority to deport non-citizens who were subjects of foreign enemies,” according to the National Constitution Center. The majority of the acts were later repealed.

For squelching dissent, for threatening due process, generations of historians note the enforcement of the Alien Act tarnished Adams’ presidential legacy. 

Even Adams may have understood that by the end of his long life. 

As an old man, John Adams referred to his defense of the British soldiers in Boston as “one of the most gallant, generous, manly and disinterested actions of my whole life, and one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country.”  

As a young man, Adams stood up for what he believed America could be and should be, before there even was a nation. 

It should be a nation of laws, not a nation backed by the rule of one man. 

Not a nation ruled by the anger and passions of a mob, even though such a mob could have harmed him in the tumultuous atmosphere of 1770s Boston.  

America needs the courage, spirit and ideals of a young John Adams, in an age when due process of law is threatened, again.

 

Dean Poling is a former editor with The Valdosta Daily Times and The Tifton Gazette.