Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Housing Problems in America: Proceedings of the 4th National Congress on Housing, Minneapolis October 6, 7, 8, 1915
To define satisfactorily such a broad provision as due process of law seems impossible. Yet it is a limitation upon governmental action which the state must observe and the courts enforce. Its obvious purpose is the protection of private rights against governmental inter ference except Where made in the furtherance of the legitimate purposes of government. But what are the legitimate purposes of government? They must be ascertained by reference to the legal and governmental theories current when the due process provisions were written into our fundamental law. Most of the at tempts to define conclusively the police power have in fact been efforts to state or summarize these purposes. It is frequently defined as a power to regulate private rights in the interest of the public health, morals, safety, peace, and welfare. The supreme court of the United States has declared that neither the amend ment (the fourteenth amendment) - broad and com prehensive as it is - nor any other amendment, was designed to interfere with the power of the state, sometimes termed its police power, to prescribe regula tions to promote the health, peace, morals, education, and good order of the people, and to legislate so as to increase the industries of the state, develop its resources, and add to its wealth and prosperity - Barbier V. Connolly, 113 U. S. 27. This is generally regarded as a satisfactory summary of the legitimate functions of government, though it is by no means clear that a care ful study of our legal and governmental history might not disclose other functions such as the power to protect those economically weak from the aggression of the strong. The existence of such power seems to be evi denced by the presence of usury and other like laws in our legal history.
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