The Project for Integrating Spirituality, Law, and Politics (PISLAP) is an international network of lawyers, law professors, law students, legal workers, and others who are seeking to develop a new spiritually-informed approach to law and social change. We believe that law can help bring a world into being where people can fully recognize and affirm each other's humanity and that through new legal processes we can foster empathy, compassion, and mutual understanding.

PISLAP is a group of lawyers, law students, law professors, judges, and related professionals that promote legal and political reforms, READ MORE

as well as the teaching of law, with an appreciation of the spiritual nature of every individual; i.e., human consciousness includes a dimension beyond the material reality apparent to our senses. In this dimension reside deep wisdom, universal love, and the recognition of our connection to each other. This higher dimension of existence is a source of important insights about public policy.

DUE PROCESS

The right to be free from deprivation of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, as stated in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, is probably the best known principle of the liberal democratic order that curtailed the power of absolute rulers. It has become a rallying cry in opposition to the conduct of the Trump Administration in cancelling congressionally enacted government programs, firing federal workers, attacking perceived enemies such as law firms and universities, and especially deporting migrants with no legal proceedings whatsoever.

The due process right to be notified of the grounds for a deprivation pursued by the government and to challenge those grounds in front of an impartial decision-maker (often simplified as the "right to notice and hearing") rests on two practical legal considerations. First, forcing the government to state the legal grounds for its actions, and providing an individual with the opportunity to challenge those grounds, constrains the government from arbitrary and illegal conduct.

Second, government decision-makers are imperfect—hasty, preoccupied, partisan, victims of confirmation bias. So mistakes are made. Providing the subject of government coercion an opportunity to challenge the proposed deprivation is the best error-correction procedure in western law.

But due process also has a spiritual dimension. For a powerful government actor to coerce an individual without telling them what is happening and listening to what they have to say about it is a denial of that person's humanity. They are treated simply as a faceless object whose knowledge and emotions don't matter. ("Gang members." "Terrorists." "Drug dealers.")

In fact, such depersonalization of disfavored groups is a hallmark of dictatorships. ("Jewish vermin.")

But granting someone the respect of explaining what is happening and why and affording a procedure where their views of the matter are carefully considered recognizes the fundamental equality of all people at the spiritual level. The accused or the subject of government coercion is no less a spiritual being than the accuser or the coercer.

To be sure, due process procedures may ultimately support the government's conduct. But knowing why, after fair proceedings, converts the person involved from a fearful and powerless subject to a spiritual equal whose legal arguments simply failed to prevail.

Thus, due process transforms a two-dimensional object into a three dimensional spiritual being. These simple procedures bind all members of a state into a spiritual community of respected and connected individuals who all owe duties to each other no matter who they are.

Viewed in this manner, the problem with the repeated denials of due process by the Trump administration is not principally that they involve arbitrary and possibly erroneous conduct. More importantly, they reflect at the highest level of our country, where national ideals and attitudes are established, a denial of the fundamental humanity and spiritual identity of thousands of people.