end against him, except by a
legal judgment of his peers or by the law of the land (_per legem
terrae_)." Coke in Part II of his Institutes, which was the source from
which the founders of the American Constitutional System derived their
understanding of the matter, equates the term "by law of the land" with
"by due process of law," which he in turn defines as "by due process of
the common law," that is "by the indictment or presentment of good and
lawful men * * * or by writ original of the Common Law."[78] The
significance of both terms was therefore purely procedural; the term
"writ original of the common law" referring to the writs on which civil
actions were brought into the King's courts; and this is the
significance they clearly have in the State constitutions. In the
earlier of such instruments the term "law of the land" was the form
preferred, but following the adoption of Amendment V "due process of
law" became the vogue with constitution draftsmen. Some State
constitutions even today employ both terms. Whichever phraseology is
used always occurs in close association with other safeguards of accused
persons, just as does the clause here under discussion in Amendment V.
As a limitation, therefore, on legislative power the due process clause
originally operated simply to place certain procedures, and especially
the grand jury-petit jury process, beyond its reach, but this did not
remain its sole importance or its principal importance.[79]

Today the due process clause in Amendment V, in Amendment XIV, and in
the State constitutions is important chiefly, not as consecrating
certain procedures, but as limiting the substantive content of
legislation. Thus one of the grounds on which Chief Justice Taney, in
his opinion in the Dred Scott Case, stigmatized the Missouri Compromise
as unconstitutional was that an act of Congress which deprived "a
citizen of his liberty or property merely because he came himself or
brought his property into a particular territory of the United States,
and who had committed no offence against the laws, could hardly be
dignified with the name of due process of law";[80] and sixty-six years
later the Court held the District of Columbia Minimum Wage Act for women
and minors to be void under the due process clause of Amendment V, not
on account of any objection to the methods by which it was to be
enforced but because of the content of the act--its substantive
requirements.[81] And it is beca