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A Missing Link In The Evolution Of Due Process, Wallace Mendelson

Vanderbilt Law Review

On the eve of the American Revolution, Blackstone could comment that "so great.., is the regard of the [English] law for private property ... it will not authorize the least violation of it; no, not even for the general good of the whole community."' A similar concern for proprietary interests soon found expression on this side of the Atlantic in what Professor Corwin has called "The Basic Doctrine of American Constitutional Law"; namely, the "doctrine of vested interests." The general purport of this concept was that "the effect of legislation on existing property rights was a primary test of its …