Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/16pdf/15-1358_6khn.pdf
Page Number: 49.0

Cite as:  582 U. S. ____ (2017) 

5 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

stating  or  suggesting  that  the  Constitution  provides  fed- 
eral  courts  with  considerable  legal  authority  to  use  tradi-
tional  remedies  to  right  constitutional  wrongs.    That 
precedent begins with Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137 
(1803),  which  effectively  placed  upon  those  who  would 
deny the existence of an effective legal remedy the burden 
of showing why their case was special.  Chief Justice John 
Marshall wrote for the Court that 

“[t]he very essence of civil liberty [lies] in the right of
every  individual  to  claim  the  protection  of  the  laws, 
whenever he receives an injury.”  Id., at 163. 

The  Chief  Justice  referred  to  Blackstone’s  Commentaries 
stating that there 

“ ‘is a general and indisputable rule, that where there
is  a  legal  right,  there  is  also  a  legal  remedy  . . .  [and
that]  it  is  a  settled  and  invariable  principle  in  the 
laws  of  England,  that  every  right,  when  withheld, 
must  have  a  remedy,  and  every  injury  its  proper  re-
dress.’ ”  1 Cranch, at 163. 

The Chief Justice then wrote: 

“The government of the United States has been em-
phatically  termed  a  government  of  laws,  and  not  of 
men.  It will [not] deserve this high appellation, if the
laws  furnish  no  remedy  for  the  violation  of  a  vested
legal right.”  Ibid. 

He concluded for the Court that there must be something 
“peculiar”  (i.e.,  special)  about  a  case  that  warrants  “ex-
clu[ding]  the  injured  party  from  legal  redress  . . .  [and 
placing it within] that class of cases which come under the
description of damnum absque injuria—a loss without an 
injury.”  Id., at 163–164; but cf. id., at 164 (placing “politi-
cal” questions in the latter, special category).

Much  later,  in  Bell  v.  Hood,  327  U. S.  678,  684  (1946),