In a 'universal' or tangible sense, rights don't exist, nor do morals. Clearly throughout history, and still today, the worth of an individual human life amounts to the value of dust on a bookshelf, no matter the status of one human next to another.
However, it is a common belief that human beings are naturally moral in the sense of right and wrong. Once we became sentient through evolution and developed communication, instinct became emotion. Emotion led to empathy and compassion which puts us in this place of morals, ethics and rights which people fight and die for. And will continue to fight for even if a person has to die for people whom they do not know, which can probably be traced back to instinct in the form of the need to preserve our species, though noone seems to take this type of thought to its simple origins. Most are driven by an ideology instead, which is actually manipulation of people by the hierarchy of the privileged few that plays on the basic concept I've described (and is a whole other situation I could blather about but won't).
So yes, due process is morally correct and a human right.
I got a text from my sister containing an anecdote about Margaret Mead. Although it is apocryphal, it is still relevant:
"According to a
commonly shared story, the anthropologist Margaret Mead was supposedly asked by a student what she thought was the earliest sign of a civilized society. There are many variations of the anecdote, but the general details are similar: To the student’s surprise, Mead replied that the first sign of civilization is a healed human femur—the long bone that connects the hip to the knee.
Mead proceeded to explain, as the story goes, that wounded animals in the wild would be hunted and eaten before their broken bones could heal. Thus, a healed femur is a sign that a wounded person must have received help from others. Mead is said to have concluded, “Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts.”
It is, to be sure, a beautiful, “feel-good” story—one that puts kindness, altruism, and collaboration at the heart of being human. One version,
published by Forbes at the start of the pandemic, vaguely references an archaeological site “15,000 years old” where the femur was supposedly found—suggesting that these qualities are deeply embedded in human history. It’s no surprise that the anecdote began
recirculating online during a time of historic uncertainty and isolation."
Altruism, I believe, is not a uniquely human trait, but it is a relevant demonstration to the concept of civilization. The instinct to help others is directly connected to the concept of "fairness".
I, and others, have argued that "Due process" is,
of course, a human invention. As is philosophy. But the question posed by the OP is "Is due process a human right? (
from a moral perspective)". Since both morality and human rights are, of necessity, a human construction, "rights" are only effective if enforceable. That is true of all laws, and, by extension, rights.
Arguing about the necessity of government enforcement or the existence of God is immaterial and irrelevant to the question (yes, they are different things). The point is
expectation and
consensus.
Some of us have referenced the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights - itself a product of human endeavor. Its point, of course, is to express the consensus of the world body and set forth its expectation of its members. It is thus an aspirational expression. That is all the OP is asking of us:
what are YOUR expectations? I, personally, believe due process is
the seminal human right. No other "human right" can exist in its absence. Thus, "Due Process"
is a "human right" - indeed
THE human right.
"Rights" can always be violated or ignored - we're increasingly aware of that in this country - but,
from a moral perspective, that violates our personal sense of "right" and wrong. That answers the question pretty definitively, doesn't it?