Opinion: Due process has been doctrine for 800 years. If explanation is still needed, here it is.

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I have heard more than one person break down with emotion talking about their experiences with Pope Francis, who died last month. (As of this writing, the conclave to choose a new pope was underway.) He washed the feet of prison inmates. He ate with the destitute in soup kitchens. He prayed with migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. He is called openhearted, nonjudgmental, loving.

In short, Francis treated everyone with respect for their humanity and inner equality.

The legal world, with its harsh rules, cold logic and adversary procedures, may seem light-years away from the spiritual realm where Pope Francis did his work. But strange as it may seem, one of the core principles of our legal system mirrors the universal respect shown by Francis. For 800 years, this doctrine has given ordinary citizens the means to stand up to absolutist rulers. Now it is on center stage: the requirement of due process of law.

The Fifth and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution prohibit the government from depriving any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law. These familiar constitutional requirements rest on a tradition of individual liberty that goes all the way back to the Magna Carta in 1215.

The constitutional language would appear clear, but in an interview aired Sunday President Donald Trump said he did not know whether truly all persons in the U.S. deserve due process.

The Trump administration prides itself on moving fast and breaking things. It prefers abrupt, unilateral action: research grants and contracts — axed without warning. Thousands of federal workers — fired by mass emails. Harvard’s nonprofit status — suddenly stripped. Security clearances of major law firms — suspended. Venezuelan migrants — labeled as invading terrorists based on clothes and tattoos.

Not so fast. This strategy violates the due process protections of those whose things are being broken.

The due process right is straightforward. The government must tell a person if it plans to take something from them and why it can do so. And it must give them the chance to fight it.

This right has two practical benefits. First, it is a lot harder to be lawless if you need to provide a legal reason for what you want to do.

Second, government officials are imperfect — hasty, preoccupied, partisan, victims of confirmation bias. So they make mistakes. Giving every person the right to contest a seizure by the government in front of a fair decisionmaker is the best error-correction procedure in Western law.

Last week the Minnesota Star Tribune showed us due process in action during three months of hearings at the Fort Snelling immigration court. The Star Tribune observed that the federal Department of Homeland Security “also appeared to mix up cases amid the flurry of lockups.”

In one case, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had arrested a carpenter from Ecuador when they came looking for his landlord. The carpenter had no criminal record. The Homeland Security lawyer argued against the man’s release on bond, claiming he had committed many driving offenses. But with the man’s freedom at stake, the government lawyer was apparently looking at the wrong documents. The judge asked the lawyer where she was getting information that the judge didn’t see and then overruled her.

By contrast, in the infamous Kilmar Abrego Garcia case, everyone agrees that his deportation to a supermax prison in El Salvador for terrorists was simply a mistake. Because he never got a chance to correct the error, he disappeared into a horrendous black hole.

Another problem: Without the security of due process, people more easily give in to government intimidation. In recent weeks, the government has revoked the visas of some 1,000 students from at least 128 colleges and universities, often without the usual notice. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said the revocations include some students who protested Israel’s war in Gaza and those who face criminal charges. The right to protest aside, many students say they are neither protesters nor criminals.

Many foreign students are in a panic. Dozens of foreign students are asking college newspapers to delete their opinion articles and other content. Some students have chosen to “self-deport” to avoid detention. Several have filed lawsuits for denial of due process.

So we see the practical value of requiring notice and a hearing. Due process is not some extremist manifesto — every teenager about to be grounded for missing curfew knows they are entitled to explain that they got mugged on the way home.

But there is a far deeper significance to the due process procedures than just their practicality. They transform helpless victims of government coercion into legal equals who can demand answers.

I never heard Pope Francis talk about due process, but I think he would have said that it is the right way to treat a fellow human. For a powerful government agency to coerce an individual without telling them what is happening and listening to what they have to say is a denial of that person’s humanity. They are treated simply as a faceless object whose knowledge and emotions don’t matter. (“Aliens?” They are supposed to come from Mars; we are talking about human beings.)

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

But giving someone the respect of explaining what is happening and listening carefully to their point of view recognizes the underlying equality of all people. Like the prisoners whose feet were washed by Pope Francis, any subject of government coercion is no less a spiritual being than the coercer.

As with people tearfully describing Francis’ treatment of the powerless, I too have been deeply moved watching a courtroom full of trained professionals — lawyers, clerks, probation officers, law enforcement officers, a court reporter, maybe an interpreter and the judge — all earnestly playing their roles in ensuring that a defendant, sometimes a powerless person of color, receives due process.

The model of Pope Francis teaches us that repeated violations of due process demonstrate, at the highest level of our government, a denial of the fundamental humanity and spiritual identity of thousands of people.

I wish Francis were still guiding us.

Bruce Peterson is a senior district judge and teaches a course on lawyers as peacemakers at the University of Minnesota Law School.