"Due Process" Not in OED

[Fred Shapiro]

On Tue, 21 Mar 2006, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:

> On Tue, Mar 21, 2006 at 10:42:21AM -0500, Baker, John wrote:
>>
>>         Are you sure this isn't a later translation?  Aren't most
>> statutes from this period in Latin?
>
> I don't know anything about law, but I know that there's
> no way what Fred posted was written in English in 1344.
>
> The OED does need _due process_ though, I'd agree.

Sorry for posting such a stupid message, both linguistically and
bibliographically.  This illustrates why, when people sometimes regard me
as the second leading expert on legal terminology, I am quick to point out
that Bryan Garner knows about a million times more than me about legal
terminology.

The 1344 statute was indeed not in English, so my citation was obviously a
later translation.  I'll leave it to someone else to trace the earliest
English translation.  As for the real first English use of "due process,"
the Middle English Dictionary provides a _terminus ad quem_ with a 1439
citation, and the Dictionary of National Biography, in its entry for Sir
Robert Tresilian, implies that "without due process of law" was used in
1381, but gives no details.

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
   Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
Yale Law School                             forthcoming
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               http://quotationdictionary.com
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