g as the opportunity for a hearing as to the value of the land is
guaranteed during the condemnation proceedings. Where the statute
contains an adequate provision for assured payment of compensation
without unreasonable delay, the taking may precede compensation.[675]

DUE PROCESS OF LAW IN CIVIL PROCEEDINGS

Some General Criteria

What is due process of law depends on the circumstances.[676] It varies
with the subject matter and the necessities of the situation. By due
process of law is meant one which, following the forms of law, is
appropriate to the case, and just to the parties affected. It must be
pursued in the ordinary mode prescribed by law; it must be adapted to
the end to be attained; and whenever necessary to the protection of the
parties, it must give them an opportunity to be heard respecting the
justice of the judgment sought. Any legal proceeding enforced by public
authority, whether sanctioned by age or custom or newly devised in the
discretion of the legislative power, which regards and preserves these
principles of liberty and justice, must be held to be due process of
law.[677]

Ancient Usage and Uniformity.--What is due process of law may
be ascertained in part by an examination of those settled usages and
modes of proceedings existing in the common and statute law of England
before the emigration of our ancestors, and shown not to have been
unsuited to their civil and political condition by having been acted on
by them after the settlement of this country. If it can show the
sanction of settled usage both in England and in this country, a process
of law which is not otherwise forbidden may be taken to be due process
of law. In other words, the antiquity of a procedure is a fact of weight
in its behalf. However, it does not follow that a procedure settled in
English law at the time of the emigration and brought to this country
and practiced by our ancestors is, or remains, an essential element of
due process of law. If that were so, the procedure of the first half of
the seventeenth century would be fastened upon American jurisprudence
like a strait jacket, only to be unloosed by constitutional amendment.
Fortunately, the States are not tied down by any provision of the
Constitution to the practice and procedure which existed at the common
law, but may avail themselves of the wisdom gathered by the experience
of the country to make changes deemed to be necessary.[678]

Equality.--If due pro