On the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, the Supreme Court talks about the Magna Carta.

"The Great Charter is now an octocentenarian. The document that laid a legal cornerstone for thousands of judicial systems was sealed on June 15, 1215...."

From today's Kerry v. Din — blogged in some detail here — Justice Scalia (joined by the Chief and Justice Thomas) wrote:

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 the subjects have of the gift of the king”; “exiled”; or “fore­ judged of life, or limbe, disherited, or put to torture, or death.” 1 Coke, supra, at 46–48. Blackstone’s description of the rights protected by Magna Carta is similar, al­though he discusses them in terms much closer to the “life, liberty, or property” terminology used in the Fifth Amendment. He described first an interest in “personal security,” “consist[ing] in a person’s legal and uninterrupted enjoyment of his life, his limbs, his body, his health, and his reputation.” 1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 125 (1769). Second, the “personal liberty of individuals” “consist[ed] in the power of loco­ motion, of changing situation, or removing one’s person to whatsoever place one’s own inclination may direct; with­ out imprisonment or restraint.” Id., at 130. And finally, a person’s right to property included “the free use, enjoy­ ment, and disposal of all his acquisitions.” Id., at 134.

This was in the context of saying that government had not denied Din due process. The government stood in the way of her living in the United States with her husband, which wasn't an interest that fell within the historical understanding understanding of liberty.