Substantive due process

Substantive due process, in United States constitutional law, is a principle that allows courts to protect certain rights deemed fundamental from government interference under the authority of the due process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution, which prohibit the federal and state governments, respectively, from depriving any person of "life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." Substantive due process demarcates the line between the acts by persons that courts hold are subject to government regulation or legislation and the acts that courts place beyond the reach of governmental interference. Whether the Fifth and/or Fourteenth Amendments were intended to serve this function continues to be a matter of scholarly as well as judicial discussion and dissent.