Legal Memorandum: Deprivation of Rights and Due Process Violation

Issue: Under federal law, how to courts determine if a deprivation of rights resulted from a violation of due process?

Procedural due process protects against the deprivation of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.  It is, thus, a two-part inquiry: there must be a deprivation and that deprivation must have occurred without “due process.”  What process is due is determined by applying a balancing test which the Supreme Court set out in Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319, 335 (1976):

First, the private interest that will be affected by the official action; second, the risk of an erroneous deprivation of such interest through the procedures used, and the probable value, if any, of additional or substitute procedural safeguards; and finally, the Government’s interest, including the function involved and the fiscal and administrative burdens that the additional or substitute procedural requirement would entail.

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