Opinion ID: 105103
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: substantive due process.

Text: Substantively, due process of law renders what is due to a strong state as well as to a free individual. It tolerates all reasonable measures to insure the national safety, and it leaves a large, at times a potentially dangerous, latitude for executive judgment as to policies and means. [5] After all, the pillars which support our liberties are the three branches of government, and the burden could not be carried by our own power alone. Substantive due process will always pay a high degree of deference to congressional and executive judgment, especially when they concur, as to what is reasonable policy under conditions of particular times and circumstances. Close to the maximum of respect is due from the judiciary to the political departments in policies affecting security and alien exclusion. Harisiades v. Shaughnessy, 342 U. S. 580. Due process does not invest any alien with a right to enter the United States, nor confer on those admitted the right to remain against the national will. Nothing in the Constitution requires admission or sufferance of aliens hostile to our scheme of government. Nor do I doubt that due process of law will tolerate some impounding of an alien where it is deemed essential to the safety of the state. Even the resident, friendly alien may be subject to executive detention without bail, for a reasonable period, pending consummation of deportation arrangements. Carlson v. Landon, 342 U. S. 524. The alien enemy may be confined or his property seized and administered because hostility is assumed from his continued allegiance to a hostile state. Cf. Ludecke v. Watkins, 335 U. S. 160; Zittman v. McGrath, 341 U. S. 446, and 341 U. S. 471. If due process will permit confinement of resident aliens friendly in fact because of imputed hostility, I should suppose one personally at war with our institutions might be confined, even though his state is not at war with us. In both cases, the underlying consideration is the power of our system of government to defend itself, and changing strategy of attack by infiltration may be met with changed tactics of defense. Nor do I think the concept of due process so paralyzing that it forbids all detention of an alien as a preventive measure against threatened dangers and makes confinement lawful only after the injuries have been suffered. In some circumstances, even the citizen in default of bail has long been subject to federal imprisonment for security of the peace and good behavior. [6] While it is usually applied for express verbal threats, no reason is known to me why the power is not the same in the case of threats inferred by proper procedures from circumstances. The British, with whom due process is a habit, if not a written constitutional dictum, permit a court in a limited class of cases to pass a sentence of preventive detention if satisfied that it is expedient for the protection of the public. [7] I conclude that detention of an alien would not be inconsistent with substantive due process, providedand this is where my dissent beginshe is accorded procedural due process of law.