Nor is “due process of law” denied by the Workman’s Compensation Act.  No damages can be recovered from the employer against his consent without a suit at law.  The statute in terms provides that “any question which shall arise under this act shall be determined either by agreement or by arbitration as provided in the Code of Civil Procedure, or by an action at law as herein provided.”  And what is provided is that, if the employer fail to make compensation as provided by the Act, the injured party or his guardian or executor may sue for the amount.  The law does not deny the employer his day in court.  But it redefines the question for the court to decide.  It has not to decide whether the employer is guilty of fault.  His liability does not depend on his fault.  The court has simply to decide whether the accident occurred in the due course of the business, and, if the employer chooses to raise the question, whether it was “caused in whole or in part by the serious and willful misconduct of the workman.”  If not, the workman is entitled to recover, and the amount which he is entitled to recover is fixed by the statute.  The question, then, is this: 

Does a law which, for accidents in certain carefully defined and especially dangerous employments, transfers the liability from the individual to the organization, and which carefully preserves the right of the employer to submit any questions which arise under the law to the courts for adjudication, deprive the employer of his property without due process of law?  The Court of Appeals of New York State affirms that it does. The Outlook affirms that it does not.

To state this question appears to us to answer it.  Certainly there is nothing in the Workman’s Compensation Act which violates the letter of the Constitution.  It does not in terms take the property of the employer without due process of law.  How any one can find in the act a violation of the spirit of the Constitution we find it difficult to conceive.  And that difficulty is enhanced, not relieved, by a careful study of the opinions of the Court.  For in those opinions it is assumed that on its face the law is unconstitutional, and the Court devotes all its intellectual energies to an attempt to show that the authorities cited in opposition are exceptional.  That the law and the Constitution are not inconsistent is, however, established both by a consideration of the object and intent of the Constitutional provision and by judicial decisions interpreting it.  To these two considerations we now direct the attention of the reader.

The provision in the federal Constitution that “no person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty, or property, except by due process of law” (Fifth Amendment), and the provision, “nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law” (Fourteenth Amendment), are derived from the Great Charter wrested from King John by the Barons in 1215.  “No freeman