Cite as: 523 U. S. 833 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
gatory stop or other seizure"), cert. denied, 498 U. S. 851 (1990).7
B
Since the time of our early explanations of due process, we have understood the core of the concept to be protection against arbitrary action:
"The principal and true meaning of the phrase has never been more tersely or accurately stated than by Mr. Justice Johnson, in Bank of Columbia v. Okely, 4 Wheat. 235-244 [(1819)]: 'As to the words from Magna Charta, incorporated into the Constitution of Maryland, after volumes spoken and written with a view to their exposition, the good sense of mankind has at last settled down to this: that they were intended to secure the individual from the arbitrary exercise of the powers of government, unrestrained by the established principles of private right and distributive justice.' " Hurtado v. California, 110 U. S. 516, 527 (1884).
We have emphasized time and again that "[t]he touchstone of due process is protection of the individual against arbitrary action of government," Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U. S. 539, 558 (1974), whether the fault lies in a denial of funda-7 Several amici suggest that, for the purposes of Graham, the Fourth Amendment should cover not only seizures, but also failed attempts to make a seizure. See, e. g., Brief for National Association of Counties et al. as Amici Curiae 10-11. This argument is foreclosed by California v. Hodari D., 499 U. S. 621 (1991), in which we explained that "neither usage nor common-law tradition makes an attempted seizure a seizure. The common law may have made an attempted seizure unlawful in certain circumstances; but it made many things unlawful, very few of which were elevated to constitutional proscriptions." Id., at 626, n. 2. Attempted seizures of a person are beyond the scope of the Fourth Amendment. See id., at 646 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (disagreeing with the Court's position that "an attempt to make [a] . . . seizure is beyond the coverage of the Fourth Amendment").
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