Source: http://burneylawfirm.com/blog/tag/qualified-immunity/
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 13:55:03+00:00

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1. I recently spoke with a con law scholar who said the Supreme Court is “fascinated” with the topic and takes cases that don’t even seem that important. What do you think?
2. Recent Supreme Court decisions on the topic are generally summary reversals of circuit court decisions denying qualified immunity. Why do you think the Court isn’t issuing more merits decisions?
3. Although the Court says it doesn’t correct errors in individual cases, they seem to be doing that in this area. Please comment.
4. Regarding the circuit courts, do you have any statistics (or a resource) about which ones consistently deny qualified immunity?
5. The Court repeatedly finds that there isn’t “clearly established” law to deny qualified immunity but it doesn’t issue further guidance on what clearly established law is. Why do you think this is?
1, 2, 3, and 5 are related. I don’t have anything to offer for #4, sadly.
First, a little background. After §1983 was passed in 1871, it didn’t have the same meaning and scope that it does today. Not until the 1961 Supreme Court decision of Monroe v. Pope, which really gave new life to the statute. During the 1960s and 1970s, the Court expanded the statute’s applicability and made it easier to sue a state actor in federal court. By the end of the 1970s, §1983 had become the go-to statute for civil rights lawsuits.
But starting in the 1980s, the Court had a change of heart. Now it seemed focused on undercutting the scope and effect of §1983. For example, civil rights lawsuits are basically torts — constitutional torts — but the Court replaced tort standards of culpability with newer, harder standards of the Court’s own devising. Similarly, the Court decided that some things like false imprisonment and slander wouldn’t count as civil rights violations for §1983 purposes, so you’d have to sue under state tort law for those kinds of wrongs.
Among the limitations it added were newfangled ideas of “immunity” from being sued. In other words the government officials §1983 apparently let you sue couldn’t be sued. Judges and prosecutors got absolute immunity in the late 1970s, but Qualified Immunity for other officials wouldn’t be added until the mid-1980s.
That’s a problem. When the Court replaces what the law is with what it thinks the law ought to do, things get really messy. Cases get decided based on the desired outcome, rather than on the application of a consistent and predictable legal standard. When you see confusing, inconsistent, or irreconcilable lines of cases, this is often the explanation. The rulings meander because they’re rudderless.
Before the 1980s were out, the Court’s jurisprudence on Qualified Immunity was already confusing, and it was going through some real contortions to craft decisions that got the desired results.
I think that’s why they started acting like you suggest in 1, 2, 3, and 5. It got to be too much. The Court wanted outcomes, but was unwilling to go through the gymnastics necessary to justify those outcomes. Merits decisions require some reasoning, and also create precedent. Better to issue summary reversals, and avoid having to come up with contorted reasoning and confusing precedent. I’m only speculating here, but I bet I’m not too far wrong.
Okay, that would explain their chosen outcome. But it doesn’t explain why they’re bothering to act in the first place. Why take cases that don’t seem Earth-shaking? Why correct lower-court errors without establishing useful precedent? There I’d have to speculate again, but I strongly suspect that they feel that this is “doing the right thing,” because for decades the Court has wished Qualified Immunity didn’t even exist.
The lone dissent in the 1961 Monroe case was Justice Frankfurter. He said the Court was making this all up, that §1983 wasn’t about any of this — it was only supposed to have been used when your rights were violated by state law, not merely by a state actor. The statute was there to give you a remedy in cases where you couldn’t already sue under state law, because state law is what allowed the wrongdoing. Broadening the scope of §1983 meant the federal courts would be poking their noses in local affairs needlessly. But more than that, it would require the federal courts to make on-the-spot decisions about what our civil rights are, when they didn’t need to.
That was the lone dissent in 1961, but during the later Burger years and the Rehnquist years the Court seemed like they’d come around to his way of thinking. If that vote was held today, I bet the majority of the Court would hold that view.
Very glib, I know. But I don’t have time for a longer (or shorter?) email with I’m sure better analysis. Hope it helps, though!
I made a thing for Radley Balko at the Washington Post on Qualified Immunity. Some people had questions about it over on my comic, which was about something completely different. One of the WaPo pages mentioned the elimination of the KKK under President Grant.
Wait I thought that the KKK and Knights of the White Camilla weren’t so much defeated as succeeded in implementing policies after the compromise that brought Rutherford B Hayes into the White House?
There’s no doubt that Reconstruction failed, and racist policies were certainly implemented as a result — but the KKK itself did cease to exist as an organization. Another KKK would eventually be formed in 1915 or thereabouts, but that original one was gone.
That is very interesting. However, what does any of this stuff about reconstruction have to do with law? Or the neuroscience of memory?
What, we haven’t had digressions here before? Just run with it.
As to the Qualified Immunity thing – is that the same doctrine that allows prosecutors to avoid any punishment when they do things like withholding evidence during discovery?
Prosecutors have something else called “absolute immunity.” They can’t be sued for stuff they did in their role as prosecutor, even if it was really really egregious and caused great injustice. They lose their absolute immunity only when they start doing the actual police work, at which point qualified immunity would instead apply. Apart from that, they have absolute immunity.
It can be a real problem: Prosecutors have insane power, and complete discretion as to how to use their power. But there’s no accountability for misuse or abuse of that power. Sure, there’s professional discipline for prosecutorial misconduct, but it’s rarely enforced. And it’s not the same as allowing the victim to sue the malefactor.
We’ll cover all this in more detail when we get to Advanced Criminal Procedure. But that subject — what happens once you’ve been charged with a crime — is more about what the lawyers and judges can and cannot do. So I’m not going to get to that until I’ve at least done Constitutional Law and Torts, which are much more relevant (and interesting) to everyone else. So in the meantime, feel free to bring that stuff up here in the comments!

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