Court Opinion

ID: 9428519
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:24:02.417818+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:13.984527
License: Public Domain

Justice Blackmun,
concurring in the result.
I agree with the Court that the judgment of the Court of Appeals is to be reversed, but I am troubled by the rationale of the Court’s per curiam opinion, and therefore I do not join it.
I would rest the reversal on the ground stated by Judge Phillips in his dissent from the judgment of the Court of Appeals, that is, on the fact that, under Ohio law, state parole authorities have the clear right to rescind a parole order be*23fore it becomes effective. 641 F. 2d 411, 417-418. It therefore seems to me that the Court of Appeals erred in holding that there was a mutual understanding here. Respondent’s expectation of release was no more than a unilateral one and no due process rights attached. I also could hold that no mutual expectation existed under the circumstances inasmuch as the Parole Board’s order was based on respondent’s untruths; respondent could not reasonably believe that there was a legitimate mutual understanding that he would be released.
That, I feel, is as far as this Court needs to go. I see no reason to go further and to suggest, as the Court does, that a mutual understanding may give rise to a property interest, but not to a liberty interest. That distinction may be an appropriate one, but I am not yet prepared to say so, and I certainly am not prepared to say so on a summary reversal. Connecticut Board of Pardons v. Dumschat, 452 U. S. 458 (1981), does not stand for so broad a proposition, and Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U. S. 471, 482 (1972), suggests for me that a protected liberty interest may indeed be based on a mutual understanding.