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Page Number: 62

4 

BROWN v. PLATA 

SCALIA, J., dissenting 

tively  suffered  an  Eighth  Amendment  violation.  That 
theory is contrary to the bedrock rule that the sole purpose
of  classwide  adjudication  is  to  aggregate  claims  that  are 
individually  viable.  “A  class  action,  no  less  than  tradi-
tional  joinder  (of  which  it  is  a  species),  merely  enables  a
federal  court  to  adjudicate  claims  of  multiple  parties  at 
once,  instead  of  in  separate  suits.    And  like  traditional 
joinder, it leaves the parties’ legal rights and duties intact
and  the  rules  of  decision  unchanged.”  Shady  Grove  Or-
thopedic Associates, P. A. v. Allstate Ins. Co., 559 U. S. ___, 
___ (2010) (plurality opinion) (slip op., at 14). 

The second possibility is that every member of the plain-
tiff  class  has  suffered  an  Eighth  Amendment  violation
merely by virtue of being a patient in a poorly-run prison
system, and the purpose of the class is merely to aggregate
all  those  individually  viable  claims.    This  theory  has  the
virtue  of  being  consistent  with  procedural  principles,  but 
at the cost of a gross substantive departure from our case 
law.  Under  this  theory,  each  and  every  prisoner  who 
happens  to  be  a  patient  in  a  system  that  has  systemic
weaknesses—such  as  “hir[ing]  any  doctor  who  had  a  li-
cense,  a  pulse  and  a  pair  of  shoes,”  ante,  at  10  (internal 
quotation  marks  omitted)—has  suffered  cruel  or  unusual
punishment, even if that person cannot make an individu-
alized  showing  of  mistreatment.    Such  a  theory  of  the
Eighth Amendment is preposterous.  And we have said as 
much  in  the  past:  “If  . . .  a  healthy  inmate  who  had  suf-
fered  no  deprivation  of  needed  medical  treatment  were 
able  to  claim  violation  of  his  constitutional  right  to  medi-
cal care . . . simply on the ground that the prison medical 
facilities  were  inadequate,  the  essential  distinction  be-
tween  judge  and  executive  would  have  disappeared:  it 
would  have  become  the  function  of  the  courts  to  assure 
adequate  medical  care  in  prisons.”    Lewis  v.  Casey,  518 
U. S. 343, 350 (1996).

Whether  procedurally  wrong  or  substantively  wrong,