Source: https://guncite.com/court/fed/sc/367us542.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 06:59:55+00:00

Document:
Return to pages 497-508 (Majority opinion).
Return to pages 509-541(Dissenting opinions).
[paragraph continued from previous page] Twining v. New Jersey, 211 U.S. 78 ; Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319 . Indeed the fact that an identical provision limiting federal action is found among the first eight Amendments, applying to the Federal Government, suggests that due process is a discrete concept which subsists as an independent guaranty of liberty and procedural fairness, more general and inclusive than the specific prohibitions. See Mormon Church v. United States, 136 U.S. 1 ; Downes v. Bidwell, 182 U.S. 244 ; Hawaii v. Mankichi, 190 U.S. 197 ; Balzac v. Porto Rico, 258 U.S. 298 ; Farrington v. Tokushige, 273 U.S. 284 ; Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497 .
It is this outlook which has led the Court continuingly to perceive distinctions in the imperative character of Constitutional provisions, since that character must be discerned from a particular provision's larger context. And inasmuch as this context is one not of words, but of (p.543)history and purposes, the full scope of the liberty guaranteed by the Due Process Clause cannot be found in or limited by the precise terms of the specific guarantees elsewhere provided in the Constitution. This "liberty" is not a series of isolated points pricked out in terms of the taking of property; the freedom of speech, press, and religion; the right to keep and bear arms; the freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures; and so on. It is a rational continuum which, broadly speaking, includes a freedom from all substantial arbitrary impositions and purposeless restraints, see Allgeyer v. Louisiana, 165 U.S. 578 ; Holden v. Hardy, 169 U.S. 366 ; Booth v. Illinois, 184 U.S. 425 ; Nebbia v. New York, 291 U.S. 502 ; Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 544 (concurring opinion); Schware v. Board of Bar Examiners, 353 U.S. 232 , and which also recognizes, what a reasonable and sensitive judgment must, that certain interests require particularly careful scrutiny of the state needs asserted to justify their abridgment. Cf. Skinner v. Oklahoma, supra; Bolling v. Sharpe, supra.
[Return to pages 497-508 (Majority opinion).

References: v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v.