Page:Kerry v. Din.pdf/6

4 562 U. S. 216, 219 (2011) (per curiam). The first question that we must ask, then, is whether the denial of Berashk’s visa application deprived Din of any of these interests. Only if we answer in the affirmative must we proceed to consider whether the Government’s explanation afforded sufficient process.

The Due Process Clause has its origin in Magna Carta. As originally drafted, the Great Charter provided that "[n]o freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or be dis­seised of his freehold, or liberties, or free customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any otherwise destroyed; nor will we not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land." Magna Carta, ch. 29, in 1 E. Coke, The Second Part of the Insti­tutes of the Laws of England 45 (1797) (emphasis added). The Court has recognized that at the time of the Fifth Amendment’s ratification, the words "due process of law" were understood "to convey the same meaning as the words ‘by the law of the land’" in Magna Carta. Murray’s Lessee v. Hoboken Land & Improvement Co., 18 How. 272, 276 (1856). Although the terminology associated with the guarantee of due process changed dramatically between 1215 and 1791, the general scope of the underlying rights protected stayed roughly constant.

Edward Coke, whose Institutes "were read in the Amer­ican Colonies by virtually every student of law," Klopfer v. North Carolina, 386 U. S. 213, 225 (1967), thoroughly described the scope of the interests that could be deprived only pursuant to "the law of the land." Magna Carta, he wrote, ensured that, without due process, "no man [may] be taken or imprisoned”; "disseised of his lands, or tene­ments, or dispossessed of his goods, or chattels"; “put from his livelihood without answer"; "barred to have the benefit of the law"; denied "the franchises, and priviledges, which