Opinion ID: 417809
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Role of Due Process

Text: 11 The fundamental purpose of procedural due process is to ensure fairness in the manner in which government exercises its power. See Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath, 341 U.S. 123, 161, 71 S.Ct. 624, 643, 95 L.Ed. 817 (1951) (Frankfurter, J., concurring). First, by requiring the government to give an individual an opportunity to be heard before being deprived of life, liberty, or property, due process promotes the form or appearance of justice. Its salutory effect is to establish the ideal that society is ruled by law and not by the caprice of the men and women in power. It also reinforces respect for the inherent dignity and worth of the individual. Secondly, due process protects against error based upon in accurate or incomplete information by requiring the government to comport with regularized procedures that are subject to judicial review. See Saphire, Specifying Due Process Values: Toward a More Responsive Approach to Procedural Protection, 127 U.Pa.L.Rev. 111, 119-21 (1978). In short, procedural due process is meant to keep the government objective and honest in its dealings with individuals. 12 Requiring a discharged public employee to prove that the stigmatizing informaiton is false before a right to a hearing is established will provide a great disincentive for the government to conduct any termination hearings. The practical difficulties a public employee encounters in haling the government into court and bearing the burden of proving the falsity of the government's charges may be overwhelming. If a governmental entity, or its agents, are to be liable only when the discharged public employee surmounts these barriers, the governmental entity is likely to take the position: Well, if you think I am wrong, sue me and prove it. Thus, instead of holding a hearing whenever the government stigmatizes an employee in the course of terminating his or her employment, the government would only have to conduct a hearing when the injured employee takes the substantial initiative of suing the government. This would be an anathema to the whole ideal of fair play embodied in the due process clauses. The absence of fair pre-termination hearings when important liberty interests are at stake also destroys the appearance of justice and increases the risk of error. As the Tenth Circuit recently noted in holding that a stigmatized public employee need not prove falsity to establish a right to a due process hearing: Just as we provide criminal trials to the guilty as well as to the innocent, we provide opportunities to rebut serious charges to those who will fail as well as to those who will prevail. McGhee v. Draper, 639 F.2d 639, 643 (10th Cir.1981).