Process can be soothing. We defer to it, almost out of habit, as if it is a machine that will resolve all conflicts, so long as we can resist meddling with its workings. But what if those workings, and the conflicts behind them, are precisely what we should be meddling with and arguing over?

The difference between a process and any old series of events is that a process is designed to lead to an outcome. A legal trial is, in theory, a classic process: Two antagonists have their say, under fair terms, and agree to abide by the result. One absurdity in Kafka’s “The Trial” is that the trial, a thing whose entire purpose is to produce an ending, does not end; the original German title is “Der Process.”

Among the United States’ most cherished processes is the one enshrined in the Fifth Amendment, and later the Fourteenth: No person shall be “deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law.” The set of rights we’ve come to think of as due process is process at its best, offering a whole litany of protections designed to minimize wrongful convictions: presumption of innocence, the right to an attorney, the requirement that guilt be proved to an exceptionally high standard. Our generous conception of due process is a source of national pride — so much so that we sometimes come to expect it in every area of life.

For the past several months, this has been the question raised as men are accused of sexual misbehavior or misconduct. What kind of “process” might the accused be owed before suffering any consequences — especially if those consequences are as informal as having people generally despise you or demand your resignation from a high-profile job? This is an open and debatable question, and there are people in a position to propose concrete answers to it. And yet we’ve often seen them call for “process” as a way to avoid taking any clear position. When a White House adviser, Rob Porter, resigned amid reports of domestic abuse, President Trump tweeted: “Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?” But he was not, to all appearances, suggesting that Porter be tried in a court of law — and if Porter deserved some formal hearing before departing his job, surely it was the Trump administration itself that would have to provide it.