rce of encouragement
to State legislatures to intervene affirmatively by way of mitigating
the effects of such coercion. By such modification of its views,
liberty, in the constitutional sense of freedom resulting from restraint
upon government, was replaced by the civil liberty which an individual
enjoys by virtue of the restraints which government, in his behalf,
imposes upon his neighbors.

DEFINITIONS

"Persons" Defined

Notwithstanding the historical controversy that has been waged as to
whether the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment intended the word,
"person," to mean only natural persons, or whether the word, "person,"
was substituted for the word, "citizen," with a view to protecting
corporations from oppressive state legislation,[95] the Supreme Court,
as early as the Granger cases,[96] decided in 1877, upheld on the merits
various state laws without raising any question as to the status of
railway corporation-plaintiffs to advance due process contentions. There
is no doubt that a corporation may not be deprived of its property
without due process of law;[97] and although prior decisions have held
that the "liberty" guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment is the liberty
of natural, not artificial, persons,[98] nevertheless a newspaper
corporation was sustained, in 1936, in its objection that a state law
deprived it of liberty of press.[99] As to the natural persons protected
by the due process clause, these include all human beings regardless of
race, color, or citizenship.[100]

Ordinarily, the mere interest of an official as such, in contrast to an
actual injury sustained by a natural or artificial person through
invasion of personal or property rights, has not been deemed adequate to
enable him to invoke the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment against
State action.[101] Similarly, municipal corporations are viewed as
having no standing "to invoke the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment
in opposition to the will of their creator," the State.[102] However,
State officers are acknowledged to have an interest, despite their not
having sustained any "private damage," in resisting an "endeavor to
prevent the enforcement of laws in relation to which they have official
duties," and, accordingly, may apply to federal courts for the "review
of decisions of State courts declaring State statutes which [they] seek
to enforce to be repugnant to the" Fourteenth Amendment.[103]

Due Process and the Police