The Right to Life Is Not a Slogan
By DeAndre, Duke of Hanumanteshwar
In moments of instability, people often say, “Nothing is guaranteed.”
Biologically, that is true.
History shows us that life can be taken by war, violence, catastrophe, disease, or circumstances that never ask the individual for permission. No constitution can promise immortality, and no legal system can eliminate tragedy.
But constitutional systems attempt something profound.
They refuse to treat life and liberty as things that power may take casually.
In the United States, the Fifth Amendment provides that no person shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The Fourteenth Amendment places a corresponding constitutional restraint upon the states, declaring that no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.
Across the world, the Constitution of India expresses its protection differently. Article 21 declares:
“No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law.”
The language is different. The constitutional histories are different. The doctrines that have developed around them are not identical.
But both constitutional traditions begin with an essential proposition: governmental power over life and liberty is not unlimited.
Those words are not merely abstract philosophy.
They are restraints.
They do not promise immortality.
They do not eliminate tragedy.
They do not guarantee that governments will never make mistakes or that injustice will never occur.
What they do is place a boundary around power.
Before the state deprives a person of life or liberty, law matters. Procedure matters. The authority being exercised matters. The justification for that exercise of power matters.
And over generations, courts have been called upon to determine what those constitutional protections actually require.
In India, Article 21 developed into one of the most consequential provisions of the Constitution. The Supreme Court's jurisprudence moved beyond a narrow understanding of physical existence, connecting the protection of life and personal liberty with human dignity and insisting that procedures affecting fundamental liberty cannot simply exist on paper, but must withstand constitutional scrutiny.
The American constitutional journey has followed its own path. Through the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, courts have confronted questions involving governmental procedure, fundamental liberty, bodily autonomy, punishment, privacy, and the limits of state authority. The boundaries of those protections have remained the subject of profound legal and political debate.
That difference matters.
Constitutional comparison should not require us to pretend that two countries have identical systems. They do not.
What connects them is something more fundamental: the idea that power must encounter law before it encounters the individual.
That is where constitutional morality becomes more than a phrase.
It does not prevent every harm.
It does not guarantee that every court will reach the right decision.
It does not ensure that every government will exercise restraint voluntarily.
But it establishes the expectation that governmental power must be justified, bounded, and accountable.
In seasons of fear, that expectation becomes especially important.
Fear creates pressure to move faster.
To suspend ordinary safeguards.
To act first and justify later.
To treat procedure as an inconvenience standing between government and whatever government believes must immediately be done.
Constitutional government reverses that instinct.
The greater the power being exercised, the more important the safeguards surrounding its exercise become.
Urgency does not automatically erase procedure.
Fear does not automatically eliminate rights.
Political popularity does not transform arbitrary power into constitutional power.
And citizens should never assume that constitutional protections preserve themselves.
Courts matter. Legislatures matter. Independent institutions matter. Lawyers, journalists, scholars, advocates, and civil society matter.
But constitutional democracy also depends upon something less formal and equally important: a public that understands why restraint exists in the first place.
Due process can appear inconvenient when we agree with the government.
Procedure can appear unnecessarily slow when we believe the person affected deserves what is happening.
Institutional restraint can appear frustrating when fear demands immediate action.
That is precisely when constitutional principles are tested.
Rights are easiest to defend when they protect people we understand, positions we support, and outcomes we already favor.
Their deeper value becomes visible when the machinery of government is required to restrain itself even when doing so is unpopular, inconvenient, or politically difficult.
The right to life is therefore not a slogan.
It is not a promise that nothing terrible will happen.
It is a structural commitment.
It is a line drawn between authority and arbitrariness.
It says that human life and liberty cannot simply become administrative inconveniences in the exercise of governmental power.
That commitment is imperfect.
It has been violated.
It has been contested.
It has been interpreted differently across generations and constitutional systems.
And it must continually be defended.
But the insistence that power answer to law before it reaches into the life or liberty of an individual remains one of the clearest expressions of constitutional government.
In a fractured age, remembering what that protection actually means may be more important than simply repeating the phrase.
The right to life is not a slogan. It is a demand that power remember its limits.
This series continues.