rifling value, * * * we think it is
within the power of the legislature to order its summary
abatement."[746]

Statutory Proceedings.--"It is not an indispensable requirement
of due process that every procedure affecting the ownership or
disposition of property be exclusively by judicial proceeding. Statutory
proceedings affecting property rights, which, by later resort to the
courts, secure to adverse parties an opportunity to be heard, suitable
to the occasion, do not deny due process."[747] Thus, a procedure under
which a State banking superintendent, after having taken over a closed
bank and issued notices to stockholders of their assessment, may issue
execution for the amounts due, subject to the right of each stockholder,
by affidavit of illegality, to contest his liability for such an
assessment, does not in effect authorize an execution and creation of a
lien before and without any judicial proceeding. The fact that the
execution is issued in the first instance by an agent of the State and
not from a court, followed by personal notice and a right to take the
case into court, is open to no objection. The statute authorizing this
procedure is itself notice to stockholders that on becoming such they
assumed the liability on which they are to be held.[748]

Judicial Proceedings.--Consistently with the due process
clause, a State may not enforce a judgment against a party named in the
proceedings without an opportunity to be heard at sometime before final
judgment is entered.[749] As to the presentation of every available
defense, however, the requirements of due process do not entail
affording an opportunity to do so before entry of judgment. A hearing by
an appeal may suffice. Accordingly, a surety company, objecting to the
entry of a judgment against it on a supersedeas bond, without notice and
an opportunity of a hearing on the issue of liability thereon, was not
denied due process where the State practice provided the opportunity for
such hearing by an appeal from the judgment so entered. Nor could the
company found its claim of denial upon the fact that it lost this
opportunity for a hearing by inadvertently pursuing the wrong procedure
in the State courts.[750] On the other hand, where a State Supreme Court
reversed a trial court and entered a final judgment for the defendant, a
plaintiff who had never had an opportunity to introduce evidence in
rebuttal to certain testimony which the trial court deemed immat