Opinion ID: 6318057
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Separation of Powers & Bivens

Text: Our Constitution is exceptional not necessarily because it enumerates individual rights, but because it divides the power to remedy their violations among three independent branches of government. Article I vests Congress with 36 HOFFMAN V. PRESTON “legislative Powers” to articulate rights and establish remedies, U.S. CONST. art. I, § 1; Article II renders the President accountable to the national electorate for the sole exercise of “the executive Power,” id. art. II, § 1; and Article III vests the federal courts with the “judicial Power” to adjudicate rights in “Cases” and “Controversies,” id. art. III, §§ 1–2. “Without a secure structure of separated powers, our Bill of Rights would be worthless, as are the bills of rights of many nations of the world that have adopted, or even improved upon, the mere words of ours.” Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654, 697 (1988) (Scalia, J., dissenting). The legislative power “is the power to make law.” Patchak v. Zinke, 138 S. Ct. 897, 905 (2018). Under our constitutional system, “the legislature not only commands the purse, but prescribes the rules by which the duties and rights of every citizen are to be regulated.” The Federalist No. 78, at 402 (A. Hamilton) (Cary & McClellan eds. 2001). Congress enjoys broad authority to create rights and remedies and may enforce many enumerated rights “by appropriate legislation.” U.S. CONST. art. I, § 8; id. amends. XIII, XIV, XV, XXIV, XXVI. The availability of a damages remedy against federal officials also implicates Congress’s taxing and spending powers, since such officials may be indemnified against legal expenses and adverse judgments for claims arising out of the scope of their employment. Id. art. I, § 7, cl. 1, § 8, cls. 1–2, 5. The judicial power is “limited to particular cases and controversies” assigned to the federal courts by statute or by the Constitution. Plaut v. Spendthrift Farm, Inc., 514 U.S. 211, 223 (1995); see Kokkonen v. Guardian Life Ins. Co. of Am., 511 U.S. 375, 377 (1994). The constitutional bases for jurisdiction—federal question, foreign ministers, admiralty, HOFFMAN V. PRESTON 37 diverse citizenship, and disputes between states, U.S. CONST. art. III, § 2, cl. 1—cannot serve as a cause of action for damages against individual officials for the violation of constitutional rights. Instead, plaintiffs alleging an official abuse of power must rely on a statutory cause of action to invoke the aid of the federal courts. Kokkonen, 511 U.S. at 377; see Wheeldin v. Wheeler, 373 U.S. 647, 652 (1963); Slocum v. Mayberry, 15 U.S. (2 Wheat.) 1, 10 (1817). Unlike the historical courts of England which created the forms of action, our courts do not create new laws. See, e.g., F. Maitland, The Forms of Action at Common Law (1936). From 1789 until 1971, the Supreme Court held firm to the indisputable conclusion that the extension of a damages remedy is an exercise of “legislative power.” Hernandez, 140 S. Ct. at 742. Without a statute permitting “suits for damages for abuse of power, federal officials [were] usually governed by local law.” Wheeldin, 373 U.S. at 652. Congress could have provided for a uniform federal statute allowing suits for damages against federal officials for constitutional torts as it had against state and local officials in 42 U.S.C. § 1983. “[B]ut it ha[d] not done so,” and it was not up to the federal courts “to fill any hiatus Congress has left in this area.” Id. In Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), the Supreme Court broke new ground by recognizing a Fourth Amendment damages remedy for the warrantless search of a residence. The Court implied a novel authority to craft constitutional torts from the statutory grant of federal question jurisdiction, which provided at the time that “[t]he district courts shall have original jurisdiction of all civil actions wherein the matter in controversy . . . arises under the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States.” 38 HOFFMAN V. PRESTON 28 U.S.C. § 1331(a); see Hernandez, 140 S. Ct. at 741–42. The ostensible driving force behind the decision was nothing more than a general notion of equity, “that where legal rights have been invaded, and a federal statute provides for a general right to sue for such invasion, federal courts may use any available remedy to make good the wrong done.” Bivens, 403 U.S. at 396 (quoting Bell v. Hood, 327 U.S. 678, 684 (1946)). The Court has extended Bivens only twice in the intervening fifty years: to intentional sex discrimination by a congressman in Davis v. Passman, 442 U.S. 228 (1979), and to the failure to provide, through deliberate indifference, adequate medical care to a federal prisoner in Carlson. The Supreme Court has long since returned to the original understanding that the Constitution empowers Congress, not the courts, “to evaluate ‘whether, and the extent to which, monetary and other liabilities should be imposed upon individual officers and employees of the Federal Government’ based on constitutional torts.” Hernandez, 140 S. Ct. at 742 (quoting Abbasi, 137 S. Ct. at 1856). The jurisprudential foundations on which Bivens relied—the practice of implying causes of action believed to further the purpose of a statute—has been soundly repudiated as a usurpation of the legislative power. See id. at 741–42; Corr. Servs. Corp. v. Malesko, 534 U.S. 61, 67 n.3 (2001) (“[W]e have retreated from our previous willingness to imply a cause of action where Congress has not provided one.”); Alexander v. Sandoval, 532 U.S. 275, 287 (2001) (“We abandoned that understanding in [1975] . . . and have not returned to it since.”). Given these developments, it seems fair to say “that if ‘the Court’s three Bivens cases [had] been . . . decided today,’ it is doubtful that [the Court] would have reached the same result.” Hernandez, 140 S. Ct. at 742–43 (quoting Abbasi, 137 S. Ct. at 1856). Only the Court can overrule Bivens, Davis, and HOFFMAN V. PRESTON 39 Carlson, and the lower courts are bound to apply them until and unless that decision is made. But the Court has recognized that every step in the direction of Bivens is a step away from fidelity to the separation of powers, and has substantially narrowed the circumstances in which the lower courts may proceed down that road. “When asked to extend Bivens, we engage in a two-step inquiry.” Hernandez, 140 S. Ct. at 743. First, we ask whether the claim arises in a “new context” or involves a “new category of defendants.” Id. (quoting Malesko, 534 U.S. at 68). Claims arise in a “new context” when they are “different in a meaningful way from previous Bivens cases decided by this Court.” Id. (quoting Abbasi, 137 S. Ct. at 1859). 3 Second, if the claim does arise in a new context, we ask whether there are “any ‘special factors [that] counsel[] hesitation’ about granting the extension.” Id. (quoting Abbasi, 137 S. Ct. at 1857). Should the requested extension fail this exacting test, any implied damages remedy against individual federal officials must be denied.