Opinion ID: 109815
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment provides:

Text: [N]or shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law . . . . This Clause raises no impenetrable barrier to the taking of a person's possessions, or liberty, or life. Fuentes v. Shevin, 407 U. S. 67, 81 (1972). Procedural due process rules are meant to protect persons not from the deprivation, but from the mistaken or unjustified deprivation of life, liberty, or property. Thus, in deciding what process constitutionally is due in various contexts, the Court repeatedly has emphasized that procedural due process rules are shaped by the risk of error inherent in the truth-finding process . . . . Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U. S. 319, 344 (1976). [14] Such rules minimize substantively unfair or mistaken deprivations of life, liberty, or property by enabling persons to contest the basis upon which a State proposes to deprive them of protected interests. Fuentes v. Shevin, supra, at 81. In this case, the Court of Appeals held that if petitioners can prove on remand that [respondents] would have been suspended even if a proper hearing had been held, 545 F. 2d, at 32, then respondents will not be entitled to recover damages to compensate them for injuries caused by the suspensions. The court thought that in such a case, the failure to accord procedural due process could not properly be viewed as the cause of the suspensions. Ibid.; cf. Mt. Healthy City Board of Ed. v. Doyle, 429 U. S. 274, 285-287 (1977); Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Dev. Corp., 429 U. S. 252, 270-271, n. 21 (1977). The court suggested that in such circumstances, an award of damages for injuries caused by the suspensions would constitute a windfall, rather than compensation, to respondents. 545 F. 2d, at 32, citing Hostrop v. Board of Junior College Dist. No. 515, 523 F. 2d, at 579; cf. Mt. Healthy City Board of Ed. v. Doyle, supra, at 285-286. We do not understand the parties to disagree with this conclusion. Nor do we. [15] The parties do disagree as to the further holding of the Court of Appeals that respondents are entitled to recover substantialalthough unspecifieddamages to compensate them for the injury which is `inherent in the nature of the wrong,' 545 F. 2d, at 31, even if their suspensions were justified and even if they fail to prove that the denial of procedural due process actually caused them some real, if intangible, injury. Respondents, elaborating on this theme, submit that the holding is correct because injury fairly may be presumed to flow from every denial of procedural due process. Their argument is that in addition to protecting against unjustified deprivations, the Due Process Clause also guarantees the feeling of just treatment by the government. Anti-Fascist Committee v. McGrath, 341 U. S. 123, 162 (1951) (Frankfurter, J., concurring). They contend that the deprivation of protected interests without procedural due process, even where the premise for the deprivation is not erroneous, inevitably arouses strong feelings of mental and emotional distress in the individual who is denied this feeling of just treatment. They analogize their case to that of defamation per se, in which the plaintiff is relieved from the necessity of producing any proof whatsoever that he has been injured in order to recover substantial compensatory damages. C. McCormick, Law of Damages § 116, p. 423 (1935). [16] Petitioners do not deny that a purpose of procedural due process is to convey to the individual a feeling that the government has dealt with him fairly, as well as to minimize the risk of mistaken deprivations of protected interests. They go so far as to concede that, in a proper case, persons in respondents' position might well recover damages for mental and emotional distress caused by the denial of procedural due process. Petitioners' argument is the more limited one that such injury cannot be presumed to occur, and that plaintiffs at least should be put to their proof on the issue, as plaintiffs are in most tort actions. We agree with petitioners in this respect. As we have observed in another context, the doctrine of presumed damages in the common law of defamation per se is an oddity of tort law, for it allows recovery of purportedly compensatory damages without evidence of actual loss. Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U. S. 323, 349 (1974). The doctrine has been defended on the grounds that those forms of defamation that are actionable per se are virtually certain to cause serious injury to reputation, and that this kind of injury is extremely difficult to prove. See id., at 373, 376 (WHITE, J., dissenting). [17] Moreover, statements that are defamatory per se by their very nature are likely to cause mental and emotional distress, as well as injury to reputation, so there arguably is little reason to require proof of this kind of injury either. [18] But these considerations do not support respondents' contention that damages should be presumed to flow from every deprivation of procedural due process. First, it is not reasonable to assume that every departure from procedural due process, no matter what the circumstances or how minor, inherently is as likely to cause distress as the publication of defamation per se is to cause injury to reputation and distress. Where the deprivation of a protected interest is substantively justified but procedures are deficient in some respect, there may well be those who suffer no distress over the procedural irregularities. Indeed, in contrast to the immediately distressing effect of defamation per se, a person may not even know that procedures were deficient until he enlists the aid of counsel to challenge a perceived substantive deprivation. Moreover, where a deprivation is justified but procedures are deficient, whatever distress a person feels may be attributable to the justified deprivation rather than to deficiencies in procedure. But as the Court of Appeals held, the injury caused by a justified deprivation, including distress, is not properly compensable under § 1983. [19] This ambiguity in causation, which is absent in the case of defamation per se, provides additional need for requiring the plaintiff to convince the trier of fact that he actually suffered distress because of the denial of procedural due process itself. Finally, we foresee no particular difficulty in producing evidence that mental and emotional distress actually was caused by the denial of procedural due process itself. Distress is a personal injury familiar to the law, customarily proved by showing the nature and circumstances of the wrong and its effect on the plaintiff. [20] In sum, then, although mental and emotional distress caused by the denial of procedural due process itself is compensable under § 1983, we hold that neither the likelihood of such injury nor the difficulty of proving it is so great as to justify awarding compensatory damages without proof that such injury actually was caused.