Court Opinion

ID: 9842066
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-22 20:12:35.930143+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:09:29.852093
License: Public Domain

Justice Brennan,
with whom Justice Marshall, Justice Blackmun, and Justice Stevens join,
concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
I agree fully with both the Court’s judgment and the reasoning used to arrive at its conclusion. Ordinarily, such complete agreement would make further writing quite unnecessary. But this is not an ordinary case. Although the issue was never raised by the parties, and although, as the Court properly concedes, the issue has absolutely no bearing on the disposition of this case, the Court nevertheless has seen fit to observe that it “ha[s] no occasion to decide” whether federal courts should “abstain” from deciding a state prisoner’s § 1983 suit for damages stemming from an unlawful conviction pending that prisoner’s exhaustion of collateral state-court challenges to his conviction. Ante, at 923. The reasons why the Court has no “occasion” to decide this question are clear enough: The question was never pressed or passed upon below, never briefed or argued in this Court, and, because respondent Glover has already exhausted all state-court remedies, the issue has no bearing whatsoever on the proper resolution of the controversy we have been called upon to decide. Accordingly, I join all of the Court’s opinion except the unnecessary paragraph at the beginning of Part IV.