Due Process Clause
Clauses in the 5th and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution
A Due Process Clause is found in both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, which prohibit the deprivation of "life, liberty, or property" by the federal and state governments, respectively, without due process of law.
The U.S. Supreme Court interprets these clauses to guarantee a variety of protections: procedural due process (in civil and criminal proceedings); substantive due process (a guarantee of some fundamental rights); a prohibition against vague laws; incorporation of the Bill of Rights to state governments; and equal protection under the laws of the federal government.
Text.
The clause in the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides:
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The clause in Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides:
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Background.
Clause 39 of Magna Carta provided:
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The phrase "due process of law" first appeared in a statutory rendition of Magna Carta in 1354 during the reign of Edward III of England, as follows:
<templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />No man of what state or condition he be, shall be put out of his lands or tenements nor taken (taken to mean arrested or deprived of liberty by the state), nor disinherited, nor put to death, without he be brought to answer by due process of law.
Drafting.
New York was the only state that asked Congress to add "due process" language to the U.S. Constitution. New York ratified the U.S. Constitution and proposed the following amendment in 1788: <templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />[N]o Person ought to be taken imprisoned or disseized of his freehold, or be exiled or deprived of his Privileges, Franchises, Life, Liberty or Property but by due process of Law.
In response to this proposal from New York, James Madison drafted a due process clause for Congress. Madison cut out some language and inserted the word "without", which had not been proposed by New York. Congress then adopted the exact wording that Madison proposed after Madison explained that the due process clause would not be sufficient to protect various other rights:
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Interpretation.
Scope.
The Supreme Court has interpreted the Due Process Clauses in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment identically, as Justice Felix Frankfurter once explained in a concurring opinion:
<templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />To suppose that 'due process of law' meant one thing in the Fifth Amendment and another in the Fourteenth is too frivolous to require elaborate rejection.
In 1855, the Supreme Court explained that, to ascertain whether a process is due process, the first step is to "examine the constitution itself, to see whether this process be in conflict with any of its provisions". In the same 1855 case, the Supreme Court said, <templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />The words, "due process of law", were undoubtedly intended to convey the same meaning as the words, "by the law of the land", in Magna Charta.
In the 1884 case of "Hurtado v. California", the Court said:
<templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />Due process of law in the [Fourteenth Amendment] refers to that law of the land ... in each state which derives its authority from the inherent and reserved powers of the state, exerted within the limits of those fundamental principles of liberty and justice which lie at the base of all our civil and political institutions, and the greatest security for which resides in the right of the people to make their own laws, and alter them at their pleasure.
Due process also applies to the creation of taxing districts, as taxation is a deprivation of property. Due process typically requires public hearings prior to the creation of a taxing district.
"State".
Due process applies to U.S. territories, although they are not States.
"Person".
The Due Process Clauses apply to both natural persons, including citizens and non-citizens, as well as to "legal persons" (that is, corporate personhood). The Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause was first applied to corporations in 1893 by the Supreme Court in "Noble v. Union River Logging R. Co." "Noble" was preceded by "Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad" in 1886. The Due Process Clauses apply to non-citizens within the United States – no matter whether their presence may be or is "unlawful, involuntary or transitory" – although the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized that non-citizens can be stopped, detained, and denied past immigration officials at points of entry (e.g. at a port or airport) without the protection of the Due Process Clause because, while technically on U.S. soil, they are not considered to have entered the United States.
"Life".
In "Bucklew v. Precythe", 587 U.S. 119 (2019), the Supreme Court held that the Due Process Clause expressly allows the death penalty in the United States because "the Fifth Amendment, added to the Constitution at the same time as the Eighth, expressly contemplates that a defendant may be tried for a 'capital' crime and 'deprived of life' as a penalty, so long as proper procedures are followed".
"Liberty".
The U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted the term "liberty" in the Due Process Clauses broadly:
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State actor.
The prohibitions of the due process clauses apply only to the actions of state actors and not against private citizens. However, "[p]rivate persons, jointly engaged with state officials in the prohibited action, are acting 'under color' of law... To act 'under color' of law does not require that the accused be an officer of the State. It is enough that he is a willful participant in joint activity with the State or its agents".
Procedural due process.
Procedural due process requires government officials to follow fair procedures before depriving a person of life, liberty, or property. When the government seeks to deprive a person of one of those interests, procedural due process requires the government to afford the person, at minimum, notice, an opportunity to be heard, and a decision made by a neutral decisionmaker.
This protection extends to all government proceedings that can result in an individual's deprivation, whether civil or criminal in nature, from parole violation hearings to administrative hearings regarding government benefits and entitlements to full-blown criminal trials. The article "Some Kind of Hearing" written by Judge Henry Friendly created a list of basic due process rights "that remains highly influential, as to both content and relative priority". These rights, which apply equally to civil due process and criminal due process, are:
Civil procedural due process.
Procedural due process is essentially based on the concept of "fundamental fairness". For example, in 1934, the United States Supreme Court held that due process is violated "if a practice or rule offends some principle of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental". As construed by the courts, it includes an individual's right to be adequately notified of charges or proceedings, the opportunity to be heard at these proceedings, and that the person or panel making the final decision over the proceedings be impartial in regards to the matter before them.
To put it more simply, where an individual is facing a deprivation of life, liberty, or property, procedural due process mandates that they are entitled to adequate notice, a hearing, and a neutral judge.
The Supreme Court has formulated a balancing test to determine the rigor with which the requirements of procedural due process should be applied to a particular deprivation, for the obvious reason that mandating such requirements in the most expansive way for even the most minor deprivations would bring the machinery of government to a halt. The Court set out the test as follows: "[I]dentification of the specific dictates of due process generally requires consideration of three distinct factors: first, the private interest that will be affected by the official action; second, the risk of an erroneous deprivation of such interest through the procedures used, and the probable value, if any, of additional or substitute procedural safeguards; and, finally, the Government's interest, including the function involved and the fiscal and administrative burdens that the additional or substitute procedural requirement would entail."
Procedural due process has also been an important factor in the development of the law of personal jurisdiction, in the sense that it is inherently unfair for the judicial machinery of a state to take away the property of a person who has no connection to it whatsoever. A significant portion of U.S. constitutional law is therefore directed to what kinds of connections to a state are enough for that state's assertion of jurisdiction over a nonresident to comport with procedural due process.
The requirement of a neutral judge has introduced a constitutional dimension to the question of whether a judge should recuse themself from a case. Specifically, the Supreme Court has ruled that in certain circumstances, the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires a judge to recuse themself on account of a potential or actual conflict of interest. For example, in "Caperton v. A. T. Massey Coal Co." (2009), the Court ruled that a justice of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia could not participate in a case involving a major donor to his election to that court.
Criminal procedural due process.
In criminal cases, many of these due process protections overlap with procedural protections provided by the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees reliable procedures that protect innocent people from being executed, which would be an obvious example of cruel and unusual punishment.
An example of criminal due process rights is the case "Vitek v. Jones", 445 U.S. 480 (1980). The due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires certain procedural protections for state prisoners who may be transferred involuntarily to a state mental hospital for treatment of a mental disease or defect, such protections including written notice of the transfer, an adversary hearing before an independent decision-maker, written findings, and effective and timely notice of such rights. As established by the district court and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in "Vitek v. Jones", these due process rights include:
Substantive due process.
By the middle of the 19th century, "due process of law" was interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court to mean that "it was not left to the legislative power to enact any process which might be devised. The due process article is a restraint on the legislative as well as on the executive and judicial powers of the government, and cannot be so construed as to leave Congress free to make any process 'due process of law' by its mere will."
The term "substantive due process" (SDP) is commonly used in two ways: first to identify a particular line of case law, and second to signify a particular attitude toward judicial review under the Due Process Clause. The term "substantive due process" began to take form in 1930s legal casebooks as a categorical distinction of selected due process cases, and by 1950 had been mentioned twice in Supreme Court opinions. SDP involves liberty-based due process challenges which seek certain outcomes instead of merely contesting procedures and their effects; in such cases, the Supreme Court recognizes a constitutionally-based "liberty" which then renders laws seeking to limit said "liberty" either unenforceable or limited in scope. Critics of SDP decisions typically assert that those liberties ought to be left to the more politically accountable branches of government.
Courts have viewed the due process clause, and sometimes other clauses of the Constitution, as embracing those fundamental rights that are "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty". Just what those rights are is not always clear, nor is the Supreme Court's authority to enforce such unenumerated rights clear. Some of those rights have long histories or "are deeply rooted" in American society.
The courts have largely abandoned the Lochner era approach (c. 1897-1937) when substantive due process was used to strike down minimum wage and labor laws in order to protect freedom of contract. Since then, the Supreme Court has decided that numerous other freedoms that do not appear in the plain text of the Constitution are nevertheless protected by the Constitution. If these rights were not protected by the federal courts' doctrine of substantive due process, they could nevertheless be protected in other ways; for example, it is possible that some of these rights could be protected by other provisions of the state or federal constitutions, and alternatively they could be protected by legislatures.
The Court focuses on three types of rights under substantive due process in the Fourteenth Amendment, which originated in "United States v. Carolene Products Co.", 304 U.S. 144 (1938), footnote 4. Those three types of rights are:
The Court usually looks first to see if there is a fundamental right, by examining if the right can be found deeply rooted in American history and traditions. Where the right is not a fundamental right, the court applies a rational basis test: if the violation of the right can be rationally related to a legitimate government purpose, then the law is held valid. If the court establishes that the right being violated is a fundamental right, it applies strict scrutiny. This test inquires into whether there is a compelling state interest being furthered by the violation of the right, and whether the law in question is narrowly tailored to address the state interest.
Privacy, which is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, was at issue in "Griswold v. Connecticut" (1965), wherein the Court held that criminal prohibition of contraceptive devices for married couples violated federal, judicially enforceable privacy rights. The right to contraceptives was found in what the Court called the "penumbras", or shadowy edges, of certain amendments that arguably refer to certain privacy rights. The penumbra-based rationale of "Griswold" has since been discarded; the Supreme Court now uses the Due Process Clause as a basis for various unenumerated privacy rights. Although it has never been the majority view, some have argued that the Ninth Amendment (addressing unenumerated rights) could be used as a source of fundamental judicially enforceable rights, including a general right to privacy, as discussed by Justice Goldberg concurring in "Griswold".
Void for vagueness.
The courts have generally determined that laws which are too vague for the average citizen to understand deprive citizens of their rights to due process. If an average person cannot determine who is regulated, what conduct is prohibited, or what punishment may be imposed by a law, courts may find that law to be void for vagueness. See "Coates v. Cincinnati", where the word "annoying" was deemed to lack due process insertion of fair warning.
Incorporation of the Bill of Rights.
Incorporation is the legal doctrine by which the Bill of Rights, either in full or in part, is applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause. The basis for incorporation is substantive due process regarding substantive rights enumerated elsewhere in the Constitution, and procedural due process regarding procedural rights enumerated elsewhere in the Constitution.
Incorporation started in 1897 with a takings case, continued with "Gitlow v. New York" (1925), which was a First Amendment case, and accelerated in the 1940s and 1950s. Justice Hugo Black famously favored the jot-for-jot incorporation of the entire Bill of Rights. Justice Felix Frankfurter, however—joined later by Justice John M. Harlan—felt that the federal courts should only apply those sections of the Bill of Rights that were "fundamental to a scheme of ordered liberty". It was the latter course that the Warren Court of the 1960s took, although almost all of the Bill of Rights has now been incorporated jot-for-jot against the states. The latest Incorporation is the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment; see Timbs v. Indiana, 586 U.S. ____ (2019).
The role of the incorporation doctrine in applying the guarantees of the Bill of Rights to the states is just as notable as the use of due process to define new fundamental rights that are not explicitly guaranteed by the Constitution's text. In both cases, the question has been whether the right asserted is "fundamental", so that, just as not all proposed "new" constitutional rights are afforded judicial recognition, not all provisions of the Bill of Rights have been deemed sufficiently fundamental to warrant enforcement against the states.
Some people, such as Justice Black, have argued that the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment would be a more appropriate textual source for the incorporation doctrine. The Court has not taken that course, and some point to the treatment given to the Privileges or Immunities Clause in the 1873 "Slaughter-House Cases" as a reason why. Although the "Slaughter-House" Court did not expressly preclude application of the Bill of Rights to the states, the clause largely ceased to be invoked in opinions of the Court following the "Slaughter-House Cases", and when incorporation did begin, it was under the rubric of due process. Scholars who share Justice Black's view, such as Akhil Amar, argue that the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, like Senator Jacob Howard and Congressman John Bingham, included a Due Process Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment for the following reason: "By incorporating the rights of the Fifth Amendment, the privileges or immunities clause would ... have prevented states from depriving 'citizens' of due process. Bingham, Howard, and company wanted to go even further by extending the benefits of state due process to aliens."
The Supreme Court has consistently held that Fifth Amendment due process means substantially the same as Fourteenth Amendment due process, and therefore the original meaning of the former is relevant to the incorporation doctrine of the latter. When the Bill of Rights was originally proposed by Congress in 1789 to the states, various substantive and procedural rights were "classed according to their affinity to each other" instead of being submitted to the states "as a single act to be adopted or rejected in the gross", as James Madison put it. Roger Sherman explained in 1789 that each amendment "may be passed upon distinctly by the States, and any one that is adopted by three fourths of the legislatures may become a part of the Constitution". Thus, the states were allowed to reject the Sixth Amendment, for example, while ratifying all of the other amendments including the Due Process Clause; in that case, the rights in the Sixth Amendment would not have been incorporated against the federal government. The doctrine of incorporating the content of other amendments into "due process" was thus an innovation, when it began in 1925 with the "Gitlow" case, and this doctrine remains controversial today.
Reverse incorporation of equal protection.
In "Bolling v. Sharpe" 347 U.S. 497 (1954), the Supreme Court held that "the concepts of equal protection and due process, both stemming from our American ideal of fairness, are not mutually exclusive." The Court thus interpreted the Fifth Amendment's due process clause to include an equal protection element. In "Lawrence v. Texas" the Supreme Court added: "Equality of treatment and the due process right to demand respect for conduct protected by the substantive guarantee of liberty are linked in important respects, and a decision on the latter point advances both interests."
Levels of scrutiny.
When a law or other act of government is challenged as a violation of individual liberty under the due process clause, courts nowadays primarily use two forms of scrutiny, or judicial review, which is used by the Judicial Branch. This inquiry balances the importance of the governmental interest being served and the appropriateness of the government's method of implementation against the resulting infringement of individual rights. If the governmental action infringes upon a fundamental right, the highest level of review—strict scrutiny—is used. To pass strict scrutiny review, the law or act must be narrowly tailored to further a compelling government interest.
When the governmental restriction restricts liberty in a manner that does not implicate a fundamental right, rational basis review is used. Here a legitimate government interest is enough to pass this review. There is also a middle level of scrutiny, called intermediate scrutiny, but it is primarily used in Equal Protection cases rather than in Due Process cases.
Remedies.
The Court held in 1967 (in "Chapman v. California") that "we cannot leave to the States the formulation of the authoritative ... remedies designed to protect people from infractions by the States of federally guaranteed rights".
Criticism.
Substantive due process.
Critics of a substantive due process often claim that the doctrine began, at the federal level, with the infamous 1857 slavery case of "Dred Scott v. Sandford". However, other critics contend that substantive due process was not used by the federal judiciary until after the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted in 1869. Advocates of a substantive due process who assert that the doctrine was employed in "Dred Scott" claim that it was employed incorrectly. Additionally, the first appearance of a substantive due process as a concept arguably appeared earlier in the case of "Bloomer v. McQuewan", 55 U.S. 539 (1852), so that Chief Justice Taney would not have been entirely breaking ground in his "Dred Scott" opinion when he pronounced the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional because, among other reasons, an "act of Congress that deprived a citizen of his liberty or property merely because he came himself or brought his property into a particular territory of the United States, and who had committed no offence against the laws, could hardly be dignified with the name of due process of law". Dissenting Justice Curtis disagreed with Taney about what "due process" meant in "Dred Scott".
Criticisms of the doctrine continue as in the past. Critics argue that judges are making determinations of policy and morality that properly belong with legislators (i.e. "legislating from the bench"), or argue that judges are reading views into the Constitution that are not really implied by the document, or argue that judges are claiming the power to expand the liberty of some people at the expense of other people's liberty (e.g. as in the Dred Scott case), or argue that judges are addressing substance instead of process.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., a realist, worried that the Court was overstepping its boundaries, and the following is from one of his last dissents:
<templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />I have not yet adequately expressed the more than anxiety that I feel at the ever increasing scope given to the Fourteenth Amendment in cutting down what I believe to be the constitutional rights of the States. As the decisions now stand, I see hardly any limit but the sky to the invalidating of those rights if they happen to strike a majority of this Court as for any reason undesirable. I cannot believe that the Amendment was intended to give us carte blanche to embody our economic or moral beliefs in its prohibitions. Yet I can think of no narrower reason that seems to me to justify the present and the earlier decisions to which I have referred. Of course the words "due process of law", if taken in their literal meaning, have no application to this case; and while it is too late to deny that they have been given a much more extended and artificial signification, still we ought to remember the great caution shown by the Constitution in limiting the power of the States, and should be slow to construe the clause in the Fourteenth Amendment as committing to the Court, with no guide but the Court's own discretion, the validity of whatever laws the States may pass.
Originalists, such as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who rejects substantive due process doctrine, and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who has also questioned the legitimacy of the doctrine, call a substantive due process a "judicial usurpation" or an "oxymoron". Both Scalia and Thomas have occasionally joined Court opinions that mention the doctrine, and have in their dissents often argued over how substantive due process should be employed based on Court precedent.
Many non-originalists, like Justice Byron White, have also been critical of a substantive due process. As propounded in his dissents in "Moore v. East Cleveland" and "Roe v. Wade", as well as his majority opinion in "Bowers v. Hardwick", White argued that the doctrine of a substantive due process gives the judiciary too much power over the governance of the nation and takes away such power from the elected branches of government. He argued that the fact that the Court has created new substantive rights in the past should not lead it to "repeat the process at will". In his book "Democracy and Distrust", non-originalist John Hart Ely criticized "substantive due process" as a glaring non-sequitur. Ely argued the phrase was a contradiction-in-terms, like the phrase "green pastel redness".
Originalism is usually linked to opposition against substantive due process rights, and the reasons for that can be found in the following explanation that was endorsed unanimously by the Supreme Court in a 1985 case:
"[W]e must always bear in mind that the substantive content of the [due process] clause is suggested neither by its language nor by preconstitutional history; that content is nothing more than the accumulated product of judicial interpretation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments."
Originalists do not necessarily oppose protection of the rights heretofore protected using substantive due process; rather, most originalists believe that such rights should be identified and protected through legislation, through passing amendments to the constitution, or via other existing provisions of the Constitution.
The perceived scope of the Due Process Clause has changed over time. For instance, even though many of the Framers of the Bill of Rights believed that slavery violated the fundamental natural rights of African-Americans:
"[a] theory that declared slavery to be a violation of the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment ... requires nothing more than a suspension of reason concerning the origin, intent, and past interpretation of the clause".
Due process clauses in state constitutions.
No state or federal constitution in the U.S. had ever before utilized any "due process" wording, prior to 1791 when the federal Bill of Rights was ratified.
New York.
In New York, a statutory bill of rights was enacted in 1787, and it contained four different due process clauses. Alexander Hamilton commented on the language of that New York bill of rights: "The words 'due process' have a precise technical import, and are only applicable to the process and proceedings of the courts of justice; they can never be referred to an act of the legislature."
References.
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Substantive due process
Legal principle
Substantive due process is a principle in United States constitutional law that allows courts to establish and protect substantive laws and certain fundamental rights from government interference, even if they are unenumerated elsewhere in the U.S. Constitution. Courts have asserted that such protections stem from the due process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibit the federal and state governments, respectively, from depriving any person of "liberty ... without due process of law." Substantive due process demarcates the line between acts that courts deem subject to government regulation or legislation and those they consider beyond the reach of governmental interference. Whether the Fifth or Fourteenth Amendments were intended to serve that function continues to be a matter of scholarly as well as judicial discussion and dissent. In his concurrence in the 2022 landmark decision "Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization", Justice Clarence Thomas called on the Supreme Court to reconsider all of its rulings that were based on substantive due process.
Substantive due process is to be distinguished from procedural due process. The distinction arises from the words "of law" in the phrase "due process of law". Procedural due process protects individuals from the coercive power of government by ensuring that adjudication processes, under valid laws, are fair and impartial. Such protections, for example, include sufficient and timely notice of why a party is required to appear before a court or other governmental body, the right to an impartial trier of fact and trier of law, and the right to give testimony and present relevant evidence at hearings. In contrast, substantive due process protects individuals against majoritarian policy enactments that exceed the limits of governmental authority: courts may find that a majority's enactment is not law and cannot be enforced as such, even if the processes of enactment and enforcement were actually fair.
The term was first used explicitly in 1930s legal casebooks as a categorical distinction of selected due process cases, and by 1952 Supreme Court opinions had mentioned it twice. The term "substantive due process" itself is commonly used in two ways: to identify a particular line of case law and to signify a particular political attitude toward judicial review under the two due process clauses.
Much substantive due process litigation involves legal challenges to the validity of unenumerated rights and seeks particular outcomes instead of merely contesting procedures and their effects. In successful cases, the Supreme Court recognizes a constitutionally based liberty and considers laws that seek to limit that liberty to be unenforceable or limited in scope. Critics of substantive due process decisions usually assert that such decisions should be left to the purview of more politically-accountable branches of government.
Conceptual basics.
The courts have viewed the Due Process Clause and sometimes other clauses of the Constitution as embracing the fundamental rights that are "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty". The rights have not been clearly identified and the Supreme Court's authority to enforce the unenumerated rights is unclear. Some of the rights have been said to be "deeply rooted" in American history and tradition; that phrase was used for rights related to the institution of the family.
The courts have largely abandoned the Lochner era approach (c. 1897–1937), when substantive due process was used to strike down minimum wage and labor laws to protect freedom of contract. Since then, the Supreme Court has decided that the Constitution protects numerous other freedoms, even if they are not in the text. If the federal courts' doctrine of substantive due process did not protect them, they could nevertheless be protected in other ways; for example, other provisions of the state or federal constitutions or legislatures protect some rights.
Today, the Supreme Court provides special protection for three types of rights under substantive due process in the Fourteenth Amendment – an approach which originated in "United States v. Carolene Products Co.", 304 U.S. 144 (1938), footnote 4:
The Supreme Court usually looks first to see whether the right is a fundamental right by examining whether it is deeply rooted in American history and traditions. If the right is not a fundamental right, the court applies a rational basis test: if the violation of the right can be rationally related to a legitimate government purpose, the law is then held valid. If the court establishes that the right being violated is a fundamental right, it applies strict scrutiny and asks whether the law is necessary to achieve a compelling state interest and whether the law is narrowly tailored to address that interest.
History of jurisprudence.
Early in American judicial history, various jurists attempted to form theories of natural rights and natural justice to limit the power of government, especially on property and the rights of persons. Opposing "vested rights" were other jurists, who argued that the written constitution was the supreme law of the State and that judicial review could look only to that document, not to the "unwritten law" of "natural rights". Opponents also argued that the "police power" of government allowed legislatures to regulate the holding of property in the public interest, subject only to specific prohibitions of the written constitution.
Early origins.
The phrase "substantive due process" was not used until the 20th century, but the concept arguably existed in the 19th century. The idea was a way to import natural law norms into the Constitution; prior to the American Civil War, the state courts were the site of the struggle. Critics of substantive due process claim that the doctrine began, at the federal level, with the infamous 1857 slavery case of "Dred Scott v. Sandford". Advocates of substantive due process acknowledge that the doctrine was employed in "Dred Scott" but claim that it was employed incorrectly. Indeed, abolitionists and others argued that both before and after "Dred Scott", the Due Process Clause actually prohibited the federal government from recognizing slavery. Also, the first appearance of substantive due process, as a concept, had appeared in "Bloomer v. McQuewan", 55 U.S. 539 (1852).
The "vested rights" jurists saw the "law of the land" and "due process" clauses of state constitutions as restrictions on the substantive content of legislation. They were sometimes successful in arguing that certain government infringements were prohibited, regardless of procedure. For example, in 1856, the New York Court of Appeals held in "Wynehamer v. New York" that "without 'due process of law', no act of legislation can deprive a man of his property, and that in civil cases an act of the legislature alone is wholly inoperative to take from a man his property". However, in 1887 the U.S. Supreme Court subsequently rejected the rationale of "Wynehamer". Other antebellum cases on due process include "Murray's Lessee v. Hoboken Land & Improvement Co.", which dealt with procedural due process, but the Supreme Court subsequently characterized the rationale of "Murray", in the case of "Hurtado v. California", as not providing "an indispensable test" of due process.
Another important pre-Civil War milestone in the history of due process was Daniel Webster's argument to the Supreme Court as counsel in "Dartmouth College v. Woodward" that the Due Process Clause forbids bills of attainder and various other types of depriving legislation. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court declined in the case to address that aspect of Webster's argument, the New Hampshire Supreme Court having already rejected it.
Roger Taney, in his "Dred Scott" opinion, pronounced without elaboration that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional because an "act of Congress that deprived a citizen of his liberty or property merely because he came himself or brought his property into a particular territory of the United States, and who had committed no offence against the laws, could hardly be dignified with the name of due process of law". In the case, neither Taney nor the dissenting Benjamin Robbins Curtis mentioned or relied upon the Court's previous discussion of due process in "Murray", and Curtis disagreed with Taney about what "due process" meant.
"Lochner" era.
Following the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause prompted substantive due process interpretations to be urged on the Supreme Court as a limitation on state legislation. Initially, however, the Supreme Court rejected substantive due process as it came to be understood, including in the seminal "Slaughter-House Cases". Beginning in the 1870s through the late 1880s, the Supreme Court hinted in dicta that various state statutes challenged under a different constitutional provision may have been invalidated under the due process clause. The first case to invalidate a state government economic regulation under this theory was "Allgeyer v. Louisiana" in 1897 which interpreted the word "liberty" in the due process clause to mean economic liberty. The Supreme Court would go on to impose on both federal and state legislation a firm judicial hand on property and economics right until the Great Depression in the 1930s.
The Court typically invalidated statutes during the "Lochner" era (named after "Lochner v. New York") by declaring the statutes in violation of the right to contract. The Court invalidated state laws prohibiting employers from insisting, as a condition of employment, that their employees agree not to join a union. The Court also declared a state minimum wage law for women unconstitutional. Because many of the first applications protected the rights of corporations and employers to be free of governmental regulation, some scholars believe that substantive due process developed as a consequence of the Court's desire to accommodate 19th-century railroads and trusts.
Later development.
The end of the "Lochner" era came in 1937 with the Supreme Court's holding in "West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish". In that case, the Court upheld the state of Washington's "Minimum Wages for Women" act, reasoning that the Constitution permitted the restriction of liberty of contract by state law where such restriction protected the community, health and safety, or vulnerable groups.
Although economic due process restrictions on legislation were largely abandoned by the courts, substantive due process rights continue to be successfully asserted today in non-economic legislation that affects intimate issues like bodily integrity, marriage, religion, childbirth, child-rearing, and sexuality.
Privacy, which is not mentioned in the Constitution, was at issue in "Griswold v. Connecticut", when the Court held, in 1965, that criminal prohibition of contraceptive devices for married couples violated federal, judicially enforceable privacy rights. The right to contraceptives was found in what the Court called the "penumbras", or shadow edges, of certain amendments that arguably refer to certain privacy rights, such as the First Amendment, which protects freedom of expression; the Third Amendment, which protects homes from being taken for use by soldiers; and the Fourth Amendment, which provides security against unreasonable searches. The penumbra-based rationale of "Griswold" has since been discarded; the


Waybury Inn
The Waybury Inn is an inn at 457 East Main Street in Middlebury, Vermont, United States. The inn was built in 1810, and is one of the oldest operating traveler's accommodations in the state. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. It is well known for its use in exterior shots of the "Newhart" television series.
Description.
The Waybury Inn is located on the north side of East Main Street (Vermont Route 125), near the eastern end of East Middlebury village. It is set near the westernmost end of one of the major routes across the Green Mountains in central Vermont. It consists of a <templatestyles src="Fraction/styles.css" />2+1⁄2-story gable-roofed main block, from which a two-story block extends to the rear. A single-story porch, covered by a hip roof, extends across the front and around to one side. The interior is arranged in a central hall plan, with large rooms, extending the full depth of the main block, on either side of the main staircase.
History.
The inn was built in 1810 by John Foot (or Foote). The pass to the east had opened as a toll road (turnpike) in 1808, and Foot sought to capitalize on the traffic it would bring. However, the turnpike never brought a high volume of traffic, and efforts to develop a glassworks in the village also cramped growth in the area. Moderate growth in the village by 1850 prompted its second proprietor, Royal Farr, to expand the premises in 1867 by adding the ell to the rear. This included a ballroom, and Farr added other amenities to make the inn a local site for social events. The inn was variously known as the Glen House and Green Mountain House before being given its present name in the 20th century. The only period of time in which the inn was closed was during World War II.
The inn maintains a tradition in which, in room 9, there is an antique desk with a secret drawer. Following the lead of a couple who found the drawer in 1987, guests often put notes in the drawer.
The Waybury Inn was also used as a location for exterior shots on the Bob Newhart television series, "Newhart", from 1982 to 1990. Featured as the Stratford Inn, the Waybury Inn was painted white for the show. After the show went off the air in 1990, the inn was repainted green to match the nearby Green Mountains.
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The Bob Newhart Show
American TV sitcom (1972–1978)
The Bob Newhart Show is an American sitcom television series produced by MTM Enterprises that aired on CBS from September 16, 1972, to April 1, 1978, with a total of 142 half-hour episodes over six seasons. Comedian Bob Newhart portrays a psychologist whose interactions with his wife, friends, patients, and colleagues lead to humorous situations and dialogue. The show was filmed before a live audience.
Premise.
The show centers on Robert "Bob" Hartley (Newhart), a Chicago psychologist, his work and home life, with his supportive, though occasionally sarcastic, wife Emily (Suzanne Pleshette), and their friendly but mildly pesky neighbor, airline navigator Howard Borden (Bill Daily). The medical building where Bob's practice is located also houses Jerry Robinson (Peter Bonerz), an orthodontist whose office is on the same floor, and their receptionist, Carol Kester (Marcia Wallace), as well as a number of other doctors who appear on the show occasionally.
Bob's three most frequently seen regular patients are cynical, mean-spirited and neurotic Elliot Carlin (Jack Riley), milquetoast former US Marine cook Emil Peterson (John Fiedler), and quiet, reserved Lillian Bakerman (Florida Friebus), an older woman who spends most of her sessions knitting. Carlin was ranked 49th in "TV Guide"'s List of the 50 Greatest TV Characters of All Time, and Riley reprised the character in guest appearances on both "St. Elsewhere" and "Newhart".
Most of the situations involve Newhart's character playing straight man to his wife, colleagues, friends, and patients. A frequent running gag on the show is an extension of Newhart's stand-up comedy routines, where he played one side of a telephone conversation, the other side of which is not heard. In a nod to this, for the first two seasons, the episodes opened with Bob answering the telephone by saying "Hello?"
Cast.
Bob's patients.
Seen on a recurring basis in group therapy sessions. Mr. Carlin, Mrs. Bakerman and Mr. Peterson were by far the most frequently seen patients.
Henry Winkler played patient Miles Lascoe in one season 2 episode.
Bob and Emily's relatives.
Seen very occasionally, except for Bob's sister in seasons 2–4.
Neighbors, friends and others.
Most of these were occasional or even one-shot characters.
Rimpau Medical Arts Center.
Doctors Tupperman and Newman were recurring characters; the others were mostly one-shots.
Episodes.
The first four seasons of "The Bob Newhart Show" aired on Saturday nights at 9:30p.m. Eastern Standard Time. During the winter of the 1976–77 season, the program moved to 8:30p.m. EST. For its final season during 1977–78, the program moved to 8:00p.m. EST.
The program typically aired following "The Mary Tyler Moore Show", which was also produced by MTM Enterprises.
The credits feature the Cooper Black typeface, after it was made famous in 1966 by its use in the artwork for the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds" album.
Finale.
In the show's April Fools' Day final episode, "Happy Trails to You," Bob gives up his practice and accepts a teaching position at a small college in Oregon. In the closing scene, Bob, Emily, Jerry, Carol and Howard exchange tearful goodbyes and embrace; an emotional Emily bursts into an impromptu refrain of "Oklahoma," and the others join in (except for Howard, who does not know the words), a nod to "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" finale (also produced by MTM) from the previous year, in which the newsroom characters embraced and sang "It's a Long Way to Tipperary". The final credits show the cast of the episode in a curtain call.
Awards and honors.
In 1977, the show received two Emmy nominations – for "Outstanding Comedy Series" and for Pleshette for "Outstanding Continued Performance by an Actress in a Comedy Series". Newhart, himself, was nominated twice for a Golden Globe Award as "Best TV Actor—Musical/Comedy" in 1975 and 1976. In 1997, the episodes "Over the River and Through the Woods" and "Death Be My Destiny" were respectively ranked No. 9 and No. 50 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time. TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time listed it as No. 44. In 2007, "Time" placed the show on its unranked list of "100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME". Bravo ranked Bob Hartley 84th on its list of the 100 greatest TV characters.
In 2004, TV Land commemorated the show with a statue of Newhart in character as Dr. Hartley, seated and facing an empty couch, as if conducting a therapy session in his office. The statue was temporarily installed in front of 430 North Michigan Avenue, the building used for exterior establishing shots of Hartley's office. The statue is now permanently located in the sculpture park adjacent to Chicago's Navy Pier entertainment complex. In 2005, the TV Land Awards honored "The Bob Newhart Show" with its Icon Award, presented by Ray Romano.
In 2013, "TV Guide" ranked the series No. 49 on its list of the 60 Best Series of All Time.
Later appearances by series characters.
St. Elsewhere (1985)
Jack Riley reprised his Elliot Carlin role on a 1985 episode of "St. Elsewhere" and partnered with Oliver Clark as the amnesiac John Doe Number Six. Carlin and Doe have been committed to the hospital's mental ward, where Carlin treats Doe with the same verbal abuse he directed toward Clark's "Mr. Herd" on "The Bob Newhart Show". Carlin blames his insanity on an unnamed "quack in Chicago." While Oliver Clark's recurring portrayal of John Doe Number Six is essentially identical to Mr. Herd, the two are never stated to be the same individual. In a nod to the "Mary Tyler Moore Show", John Doe Number Six addresses a character played by Betty White as Sue Ann Nivens, which Betty White's character denies.
ALF (1987)
In the 1987 "ALF" episode entitled "Going Out of My Head Over You", Willie visits a psychologist, Dr. Lawrence "Larry" Dykstra, portrayed by Bill Daily. Jack Riley is in the waiting room, apparently portraying Elliot Carlin. Also in this episode, ALF mentions learning about psychology by watching episodes of "The Bob Newhart Show".
Newhart (1988 and 1990)
Riley appears in a 1988 episode of "Newhart", playing an unnamed character who acts very much like Mr. Carlin. This character is being treated by the same therapist in Vermont whom Dick Loudon (Bob Newhart) visits for marriage counseling. Dick feels he recognizes Riley's character, but cannot place his face; whereupon the unnamed patient insults him. Echoing Carlin's statement from the 1985 "St. Elsewhere", the therapist apologizes for her patient, explaining that it has taken her "years to undo the damage caused by some quack in Chicago."
Tom Poston, who played Cliff "The Peeper" Murdock, Bob's college friend from Vermont, played "George" the resident handyman from Vermont, throughout the Newhart series. Poston and Suzanne Pleshette married in 2001, with the marriage lasting until Poston's death in 2007. Pleshette died the following year.
Newhart and Pleshette reprised their roles from the show for the 1990 finale of "Newhart", in which it was revealed that the entire "Newhart" series had just been Bob Hartley's dream. Bob and Emily awake in a room identical in appearance to their Chicago bedroom from "The Bob Newhart Show". (This plot device had previously been used in the season five finale ("You're Having My Hartley") in which Emily is pregnant. At the end, the pregnancy is revealed to have been a dream.)
The Bob Newhart Show: The 19th Anniversary Special (1991)
The entire cast assembled for the one-hour clip show "" in 1991, which finds the show's characters in the present day. This show is set in Chicago, in the same apartment and office that Bob Hartley had in his 1970s show. During the course of the show, the characters analyzed Bob's dream from the "Newhart" finale. At one point Howard recalled, "I had a dream like that once. I dreamed I was an astronaut in Florida for five years," as scenes from "I Dream of Jeannie" featuring Bill Daily as Roger Healey were shown.
Murphy Brown (1994)
Newhart played Bob Hartley on "Murphy Brown", in the episode "Anything But Cured" (March 14, 1994) to beg Carol (Marcia Wallace reprising her role from "The Bob Newhart Show") to leave her job as Murphy's secretary and come back with him to Chicago.
Saturday Night Live (1995)
Newhart reprised Hartley twice in the February 11, 1995, episode of "Saturday Night Live". In one sketch, he appears on a satirical version of "Ricki Lake", befuddled by Ms. Lake's dysfunctional guests and her armchair pop psychology. The episode ended with a repeat of "Newhart"’s "just a dream" scene, in which Bob Hartley again wakes up with Emily (Pleshette), and tells her that he just dreamed he had hosted "SNL". Emily responds, "That show's not still on, is it?"
George and Leo (1997)
"George and Leo" was a sitcom starring Bob Newhart and Judd Hirsch, and a 1997 episode called "The Cameo Episode" featured a raft of cameo appearances by their co-stars of previous series. Although the actors were not necessarily playing the same characters as they played in the previous shows, there was certainly a suggestion with some of the unnamed characters that they "could" be. Amongst the "Bob Newhart Show" actors making cameos in the episode were Peter Bonerz (as "Dr. Robins"), Oliver Clark, Bill Daily (as a pilot), John Fiedler, Tom Poston (as a police officer), Jack Riley, and Marcia Wallace.
CBS at 75 (2002)
Newhart and Pleshette, as "The Hartleys," were the hosts of a segment of the "CBS at 75" broadcast.
Home media.
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment released the first four seasons of "The Bob Newhart Show" on DVD in Region 1 in 2005/2006.
On February 3, 2014, Shout! Factory announced it had acquired the rights to the series. It subsequently released "The Bob Newhart Show: The Complete Series" on May 27, 2014. The fifth and sixth seasons were later released on DVD in individual sets on February 3, 2015.
In popular culture.
Season 1 episode 7 of the 2019 Sci-fi alternate history series, "For All Mankind", in which the USSR beats the United States to a crewed lunar landing, has the crew of Apollo 22 watching "The Bob Newhart Show" on the Jamestown lunar base and greeting each other with "Hi Bob."
References.
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Newhart
American television sitcom (1982–1990)
Newhart is an American television sitcom that aired on CBS from October 25, 1982, to May 21, 1990, with a total of 184 half-hour episodes spanning eight seasons. The series stars Bob Newhart and Mary Frann as an author and his wife, respectively; who own and operate the Stratford Inn in rural Vermont. The small town is home to many eccentric characters. "TV Guide", TV Land, and A&E named the "Newhart" series finale as one of the most memorable in television history. The theme music for "Newhart" was composed by Henry Mancini.
Premise.
Bob Newhart plays Dick Loudon, an author of do-it-yourself and travel books. He and his wife Joanna move from New York City to a small town in rural Vermont to operate the 200-year-old Stratford Inn.
Dick and Joanna initially run the inn with the help of sweet-natured but simple handyman George Utley and Leslie Vanderkellen, a bright, cheerful Dartmouth College student and heiress who takes a job as a maid to find out what it is like to be "normal". Next door to the inn is the Minuteman Café, owned by Kirk Devane, a pathological liar. Leslie leaves before season two to continue her studies abroad, to be replaced by her cousin Stephanie, who, unlike Leslie, is vain, lazy, and spoiled. Brothers Larry, Darryl and Darryl take over the Minuteman Cafe when Kirk leaves after season two.
Near the end of season two, Dick becomes the host of a local television show, "Vermont Today", where he interviews an assortment of bizarre and colorful guests. His vapid, neurotic producer, Michael Harris, falls in love with Stephanie, their relationship providing a satire of 1980s excess. The final episode of the series reveals that the entire series was a dream of Dr. Robert Hartley, Newhart's character in "The Bob Newhart Show".
Cast.
Main.
<templatestyles src="Div col/styles.css"/>*Bob Newhart as Dick Loudon, owner of the Stratford Inn, author of do-it-yourself books, as well as the host of "Vermont Today"
Recurring.
<templatestyles src="Div col/styles.css"/>*William Lanteau as Chester Wanamaker, the town's fussbudget mayor (1982–90)
Reception.
"Newhart" was a solid ratings winner, finishing its first six seasons in the Nielsen top 25. Despite not finishing in the top 30 for its last two seasons, Bob Newhart stated in an interview with the Archive of American Television that CBS was satisfied enough with the show's ratings to renew it for a ninth season in 1990. However, Newhart, who was anxious to move on to other projects, declined the offer, promising CBS that he would develop a new series for the network, which he was under contract to do. This resulted in the 1992 series "Bob", which lasted two seasons.
Awards.
Nominations.
Emmy Awards.
The show was nominated for 25 Emmy Awards but never won.
Golden Globe Awards.
"Newhart" earned six nominations for Golden Globe Awards.
Other awards.
Newhart was nominated for one Casting Society of America award and four nominations for TV Land Awards. "Newhart" won a total of four Viewers for Quality Television Awards.
Home media.
20th Century Fox released season one of "Newhart" on DVD in Region 1 on February 26, 2008.
In November 2013, Shout! Factory announced it had acquired the rights to the series. It has since released the remainder of the series in individual season sets.
References.
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Bob Newhart
American comedian and actor (1929–2024)
George Robert Newhart (September 5, 1929 – July 18, 2024) was an American comedian and actor. Newhart was known for his deadpan and stammering delivery style. Beginning his career as a stand-up comedian, he transitioned his career to acting in television. He received numerous accolades, including three Grammy Awards, an Emmy Award, and a Golden Globe Award. He received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2002.
Newhart came to prominence in 1960 when his record album of comedic monologues, "The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart", became a bestseller and reached number one on the "Billboard" pop album chart and won two Grammy Awards for Album of the Year, and Best New Artist. That same year he released his follow-up album, "The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back!" (1960), which was also a success, and the two albums held the "Billboard" number one and number two spots simultaneously. He later released several additional comedy albums.
Newhart hosted a short-lived NBC variety show, "The Bob Newhart Show" (1961), before starring as Chicago psychologist Robert Hartley on "The Bob Newhart Show" from 1972 to 1978. For the latter, he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Male TV Star. He then starred as Vermont innkeeper Dick Loudon on the series "Newhart" from 1982 to 1990, where he received three nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series. He also starred in two short-lived sitcoms, "Bob" (1992–1993) and "George and Leo" (1997–1998).
Newhart also acted in the films "Hell Is for Heroes" (1962), "Hot Millions" (1968), "Catch-22" (1970), "Cold Turkey" (1971), "In & Out" (1997), and "Elf" (2003), and voiced Bernard in the Disney animated film "The Rescuers" (1977) and its sequel (1990). Newhart played Professor Proton on the CBS sitcom "The Big Bang Theory" from 2013 to 2018, for which he received his first-ever career Emmy Award, for the Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series. He also reprised his role in "The Big Bang Theory" prequel spin-off series "Young Sheldon" (2017–2020).
Early life and education.
George Robert Newhart was born on September 5, 1929, in Oak Park, Illinois. His parents were Julia Pauline ("née" Burns; 1901–1994), a housewife, and George David Newhart (1899–1987), a part-owner of a plumbing supply business. His mother was of Irish descent, while his father was of German and Irish descent. He went by his middle name, "Bob," to avoid confusion with his father. The family name Newhart is of German origin ("Neuhart").<ref name="imdb/title/5984620"></ref> One of his grandmothers was from St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. He had three sisters.
Newhart was educated at Catholic schools in the Chicago area, including St. Catherine of Siena Grammar School in Oak Park, and attended St. Ignatius College Prep (high school), graduating in 1947. He then enrolled at Loyola University Chicago, from which he graduated in 1952 with a bachelor's degree in business management. Newhart was drafted into the U.S. Army and, until his discharge, in 1954, served as a U.S.-based clerk during the Korean War. He briefly attended Loyola University Chicago School of Law, but did not complete a degree, in part, he said, because he had been asked to behave unethically during an internship.
Career.
1958–1971: Comedy albums and stardom.
After the war, Newhart worked for United States Gypsum as an accountant. He later said that his motto, "That's close enough," and his habit of adjusting petty cash imbalances with his own money showed that he lacked the temperament of an accountant. In 1958, Newhart became an advertising copywriter for Fred A. Niles, a major independent film and television producer in Chicago. There, he and a co-worker entertained each other with long telephone calls about absurd scenarios, which they later recorded and sent to radio stations as audition tapes. When the co-worker ended his participation by taking a job in New York, Newhart continued the recordings alone, developing routines.
Dan Sorkin, a radio station disc jockey, who later became the announcer-sidekick on Newhart's NBC series, introduced Newhart to the head of talent at Warner Bros. Records. Based solely on those recordings, the label signed him in 1959, only a year after it had come into existence. Newhart expanded his material into a stand-up routine that he began to perform at nightclubs. He became famous mostly on the strength of his audio releases, in which he played a solo "straight man". Newhart's routine was to portray one end of a conversation (usually a phone call), playing the comedic straight man while implying what the other person was saying. Newhart's 1960 comedy album "The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart" was the first comedy album to make number one on the "Billboard" charts and peaked at number two in the UK Albums Chart. It won two Grammy Awards, Album of the Year, and Best New Artist.
Newhart told a 2005 interviewer for PBS's "American Masters" that his favorite stand-up routine was "Abe Lincoln vs. Madison Avenue", which appears on this album. In the routine, a slick promoter has to deal with Lincoln's reluctance to agree to efforts to boost his image. Chicago TV director and future comedian Bill Daily, who was Newhart's castmate on "The Bob Newhart Show", suggested the routine to him. A follow-up album, "The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back!", was released six months later and won Best Comedy Performance – Spoken Word that year. His subsequent comedy albums include "Behind the Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart" (1961), "The Button-Down Mind on TV" (1962), "Bob Newhart Faces Bob Newhart" (1964), "The Windmills Are Weakening" (1965), "This Is It" (1967), "Best of Bob Newhart" (1971), and "Very Funny Bob Newhart" (1973). Years later, he released "Bob Newhart Off the Record" (1992), "The Button-Down Concert" (1997), and "Something Like This" (2001), an anthology of his 1960s Warner Bros. albums. On December 10, 2015, publicist and comedy album collector Jeff Abraham revealed that a "lost" Newhart track from 1965 about Paul Revere existed on a one-of-a-kind acetate, which he owns. The track made its world premiere on episode 163 of the "Comedy on Vinyl" podcast.
Newhart's success in stand-up led to his own short-lived NBC variety show in 1961, "The Bob Newhart Show". The show lasted only a single season, but it earned Newhart a Primetime Emmy Award nomination and a Peabody Award. The Peabody Board cited him as "a person whose gentle satire and wry and irreverent wit waft a breath of fresh and bracing air through the stale and stuffy electronic corridors. A merry marauder, who looks less like St. George than a choirboy, Newhart has wounded, if not slain, many of the dragons that stalk our society. In a troubled and apprehensive world, Newhart has proved once again that laughter is the best medicine." In the mid-1960s, Newhart was one of the initial three co-hosts of the variety show "The Entertainers" (1964), with Carol Burnett and Caterina Valente, appeared on "The Dean Martin Show" 24 times and on "The Ed Sullivan Show" eight times. He appeared in a 1963 episode of "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour", "How to Get Rid of Your Wife"; and on "The Judy Garland Show". He also appeared on series such as "Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre", "Captain Nice", and "Insight". Newhart guest-hosted "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" 87 times, and hosted "Saturday Night Live" twice, in 1980 and 1995. In 1964, he appeared at the Royal Variety Performance in London, before Queen Elizabeth II.
In 1962, Newhart filmed "An Evening with Bob Newhart", thought to be the first pay-per-view television special, for Canadian-based Telemeter.
1972–1978: "The Bob Newhart Show".
Newhart starred in two long-running sitcoms. In 1972, soon after he guest-starred on "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour", he was approached by his agent and his managers, producer Grant Tinker, and actress Mary Tyler Moore (the husband/wife team who founded MTM Enterprises), to work on a series called "The Bob Newhart Show", to be written by David Davis and Lorenzo Music. He was very interested in the starring role of psychologist Bob Hartley, with Suzanne Pleshette playing his wry, loving wife, Emily, and Bill Daily as neighbor and friend Howard Borden.
"The Bob Newhart Show" was a part of the CBS comedy lineup on Saturday Night consisting of "All in the Family", "M*A*S*H", "The Mary Tyler Moore Show", and "The Carol Burnett Show". The series was an immediate hit. The show eventually referenced what made Newhart's name in the first place; apart from the first few episodes, it used an opening-credits sequence featuring Newhart answering a telephone in his office. According to co-star Marcia Wallace, the entire cast got along well, and Newhart became close friends with both Wallace and co-star Suzanne Pleshette.
In addition to Wallace as Bob's wisecracking, man-chasing receptionist Carol Kester, the cast included Peter Bonerz as amiable orthodontist Jerry Robinson; Jack Riley as Elliot Carlin, the most misanthropic of Hartley's patients; character actor and voice artist John Fiedler as milquetoast Emil Petersen; and Pat Finley as Bob's sister, Ellen Hartley, a love interest for Howard Borden. Future "Newhart" regular Tom Poston had a briefly recurring role as Cliff "Peeper" Murdock, veteran stage actor Barnard Hughes appeared as Bob's father for three episodes spread over two seasons, and Martha Scott appeared in several episodes as Bob's mother.
By 1977, the show's ratings were declining and Newhart wanted to end it, but was under contract to do one more season. The show's writers tried to rework the sitcom by adding a pregnancy, but Newhart objected: "I told the creators I didn't want any children, because I didn't want it to be a show about 'How stupid Daddy is, but we love him so much, let's get him out of the trouble he's gotten himself into'." Nevertheless, the staff wrote an episode that they hoped would change Newhart's mind. Newhart read the script and he agreed it was very funny. He then asked, "Who are you going to get to play Bob?" Coincidentally, Newhart's wife gave birth to their daughter Jenny late in the year, which caused him to miss several episodes.
In the last episode of the fifth season, not only was Bob's wife, Emily, pregnant, but his receptionist, Carol, was, too. In the first show of the sixth season, Bob revealed his dream of the pregnancies and that neither Emily nor Carol was really pregnant. Marcia Wallace spoke of Newhart's amiable nature on set: "He's very low key, and he didn't want to cause trouble. I had a dog by the name of Maggie that I used to bring to the set. And whenever there was a line that Bob didn't like—he didn't want to complain too much—so, he'd go over, get down on his hands and knees, and repeat the line to the dog, which invariably yawned; and he'd say, "See, I told you it's not funny!". Wallace also commented on the show's lack of Emmy recognition: "People think we were nominated for many an Emmy, people presume we won Emmys, all of us, and certainly Bob, and certainly the show. Nope, never!" Newhart discontinued the series in 1978 after six seasons and 142 episodes. Wallace said of its ending, "It was much crying and sobbing. It was so sad. We really did get along. We really had great times together."
Of Newhart's other long-running sitcom, "Newhart", Wallace said: "But some of the other great comedic talents who had a brilliant show, when they tried to do it twice, it didn't always work. And that's what... but like Bob, as far as I'm concerned, Bob is like the Fred Astaire of comics. He just makes it look so easy, and he's not as in-your-face as some might be. And so, you just kind of take it for granted, how extraordinarily funny and how he wears well." She was later reunited with Newhart twice, once in a reprise of her role as Carol on "Murphy Brown" in 1994, and on an episode of Newhart's short-lived sitcom, "George & Leo", in 1997.
Although primarily a television star, Newhart appeared in a number of popular films, beginning with the 1959 war story "Hell Is for Heroes" (where he did his one-sided telephone act in a bunker). In 1968, Newhart played an annoying software specialist in the film "Hot Millions". His films include 1970's Alan Jay Lerner musical "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever", the 1971 Norman Lear comedy "Cold Turkey", Mike Nichols's war satire "Catch-22", the 1977 Disney animated feature "The Rescuers" and its 1990 sequel "The Rescuers Down Under" as the voice of Bernard, and he played the president of the United States in the comedy "First Family" (1980).
1982–1990: "Newhart".
By 1982, Newhart was interested in a new sitcom. After he had discussions with Barry Kemp and CBS, the show "Newhart" was created, in which Newhart played Vermont innkeeper and TV talk show host Dick Loudon. Mary Frann was cast as his wife, Joanna. Jennifer Holmes was originally cast as Leslie Vanderkellen, but left after former daytime soap star Julia Duffy joined the cast as Dick's inn maid and spoiled rich girl, Stephanie Vanderkellen. Peter Scolari (who had been a fan of Newhart's since he was 17) was also cast as Dick's manipulative TV producer, Michael Harris, in six of the eight seasons. Steven Kampmann, who was a neighbor for a while, was cast as Kirk Devane for two years, at a cafe he owned. Character actor Tom Poston played the role of handyman George Utley, earning three Primetime Emmy Award nominations as Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series in 1984, 1986, and 1987. Like "The Bob Newhart Show", "Newhart" was an immediate hit, and again, like the show before it, it was also nominated for Primetime Emmy Awards but failed to win any. During the time Newhart was working on the show, in 1985, his smoking habit finally caught up to him, and he was taken to the emergency room for secondary polycythemia. The doctors ordered him to stop smoking.
In 1987, ratings began to drop. "Newhart" ended in 1990 after eight seasons and 182 episodes. The last episode ended with a scene in which Newhart wakes up in bed with Suzanne Pleshette, who played Emily, his wife from "The Bob Newhart Show". He realizes (in a satire of a famous plot element in the television series "Dallas" a few years earlier) that the entire eight-year "Newhart" series had been a single nightmare of Dr. Bob Hartley's, which Emily attributes to eating Japanese food before he went to bed. Recalling Mary Frann's buxom figure and proclivity for wearing sweaters, Bob closes the segment and the series by telling Emily, "You really should wear more sweaters" before the typical closing notes of the old "Bob Newhart Show" theme played over the fadeout. The twist ending was later chosen by "TV Guide" as the best finale in television history. With the exception of the series finale, Newhart simply said "meow" in the MTM Productions closing logo on all episodes. The finale's logo used a sound clip of the two brothers named Darryl shouting "QUIET!!!" in unison; prior to this, only their brother Larry ever spoke a word while they remained silent.
1991–2012: Established career.
In addition to stand-up comedy, Newhart became a dedicated character actor in film and television. Newhart played a beleaguered school principal in "In & Out" (1997), acted in the Will Ferrell Christmas comedy film "Elf" (2003), and made a cameo appearance as a sadistic but appreciative CEO at the end of the comedy "Horrible Bosses" (2011). He appeared on "It's Garry Shandling's Show" and "Committed", reprised his role as Dr. Bob Hartley on "Murphy Brown", and appeared as himself on "The Simpsons". Newhart had a role on "NCIS" as Ducky's mentor and predecessor, a retired forensic pathologist, who was discovered to have Alzheimer's disease.
In 1992, Newhart returned to television with a