American due process of law derives from the provisions of the English Magna Carta, clause 39 “no free man shall be taken or imprisoned or quenched or exiled or in any way destroyed, no we will go upon him nor send against him, except by the legitimate judgment of his peers or by the law of the land (Magna Carta, 1215).” Due process of law was established and outlined in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution. The Fifth Amendment provides that the United States government “shall not deprive a person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The Fourteenth Amendment provides that “no State shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” It is through the Fourteenth Amendment that the United States Supreme Court has ensured the protection of the fundamental liberties of state citizens. The Fourteenth Amendment has become a “fundamental element of modern criminal procedure (Zalman, 2005). In the 1940s and 1950s, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that the Constitution places limits on state prosecutions. The U.S. Supreme Court had to determine what limits were defined by the Constitution and how to address them. The justices were divided on how to specify the limits imposed on states regarding legal procedures. There were essentially two schools of thought, the doctrine of fundamental fairness and the doctrine of incorporation (Samaha, 2002). Justice Felix Frankfurter was a proponent of the doctrine of fundamental fairness (Rabkin, 2010). To understand why Judge Frankfurter upheld the doctrine of fundamental fairness it is necessary to understand the substructure of the doctrine itself. One must also know Judge Frankfurter's background which heavily influenced his dec...... middle of document ...... Rochin v. California, 342 US 165). It is through Judge Black's participation in the Rochin case, that one can see the importance and necessity of the incorporation of the Bill of Rights to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. Incorporation seems to be the only way to eliminate the potential for influence of one's preferences and ideas about what is right and decent. Justice Black in his dissent in Adamson v. California (1947) offered incorporation as a means to avoid arbitrary judicial decisions and further foster dependence on the initial intent of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Incorporation was readily accepted and widely used during the 1960s, during which time the Court incorporated most criminal procedure rights into the Bill of Rights. This action required that states treat such rights as a guarantee for their citizens (Zalman, 2005).