Law Commons^™

Qualified Immunity’S Flawed Foundation, Alexander A. Reinert

Articles

Qualified immunity has faced trenchant criticism for decades, but recent events have renewed focus on this powerful defense to liability for constitutional violations. This Article takes aim at the roots of the doctrine—fundamental errors that have never been excavated. First, this Article demonstrates that the Supreme Court’s qualified immunity jurisprudence is premised on a flawed application of a dubious canon of statutory construction—namely, that statutes in “derogation” of the common law should be strictly construed. Applying the Derogation Canon, the Court has held that 42 U.S.C. § 1983’s silence regarding immunity should be taken as an implicit adoption of common …

Federal Civil Rights Litigation Pursuant To 42 U.S.C. §1983 As A Correlate Of Police Misconduct, Philip M. Stinson, Steven L. Brewer Jr, Theresa M. Lanese, Mallorie A. Wilson

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Police officers acting in their official capacity are subject to being sued in federal court pursuant to 42 U.S.C. §1983 for violating constitutional rights under the color of law. Using data obtained in a larger study on police crime in the United States, names of more than 5,500 nonfederal sworn law enforcement officers who were arrested during the years 2005-2011 were checked against the civil case party master name index of the federal courts’ Public Access to Courts Electronic Records (PACER) system. Findings indicate that more than 20% of the police officers who were arrested for committing one or more …

The False Promise Of The Converse-1983 Action, John F. Preis

Law Faculty Publications

The federal government is out of control. At least that's what many states will tell you. Not only is the federal government passing patently unconstitutional legislation, but its street-level officers are ignoring citizens' constitutional rights. How can states stop this federal juggernaut? Many are advocating a "repeal amendment, " whereby two-thirds of the states could vote to repeal federal legislation. But the repeal amendment will only address unconstitutional legislation, not unconstitutional actions. States can't repeal a stop-and-frisk that occurred last Thursday. States might, however, enact a so-called "converse-1983" action. The idea for converse-1983 laws has been around for some time …

Iqbal, Al-Kidd And Pleading Past Qualified Immunity: What The Cases Mean And How They Demonstrate A Need To Eliminate The Immunity Doctrines From Constitutional Tort Law, John M. Greabe

Law Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court’s decisions in Ashcroft v. Iqbal and Ashcroft v. al-Kidd contain issue-framing statements indicating that a constitutional tort plaintiff is required to plead facts sufficient to establish the inapplicability of the qualified immunity defense. Yet, framing the issue in this way ignores the Court’s earlier decisions in Gomez v. Toledo and Crawford-El v. Britton and is at odds with the established law of pleading; a plaintiff is not required to anticipate an affirmative defense and negate its applicability in the complaint. These cases thus raise a number of questions—Does the Court really mean what its issue-framing statements suggest? …

Misinterpreting "Sounds Of Silence": Why Courts Should Not "Imply" Congressional Preclusion Of § 1983 Constitutional Claims, Rosalie Berger Levinson

Law Faculty Publications

Despite the clear text of 42 U.S.C. § 1983, its promise to protect constitutional rights has been obfuscated by the theory that Congress, by enacting civil rights laws, has “impliedly” foreclosed the historic use of § 1983 to vindicate constitutional wrongdoing. Increasingly, plaintiffs are being denied their right to vindicate constitutional wrongdoing, either because the new “preempting” federal statute does not trigger individual liability or because it makes institutional liability more difficult to establish.

It is counterintuitive to believe that Congress, in an attempt to expand equality or due process, intended to cut off existing remedies for constitutional violations. Nonetheless, …

An Essay On Texas V. Lesage, Christina B. Whitman

Articles

When I was invited to participate in this symposium, I was asked to discuss whether the causation defense developed in Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle applied to cases challenging state action under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. As I argue below, it seems clear that Mt. Healthy does apply to equal protection cases. The Supreme Court explicitly so held last November in Texas v. Lesage. But the implications of Lesage go beyond questions of causation. The opinion suggests that the Court may be rethinking (or ignoring) its promise in Carey v. Piphus …

Supervisory Liability In Section 1983 Cases, Kit Kinports

Journal Articles

The topic of this presentation is supervisory liability in Section 1983 cases. Assume for present purposes that a plaintiff's constitutional rights have been violated - that some state official has acted in violation of the Constitution. The question to be addressed here is whether that state official's supervisors can be held liable for damages stemming from the constitutional violation.

Employment Discrimination: Recent Developments In The Supreme Court (The Supreme Court And Local Government Law: The 1994-1995 Term), Eileen Kaufman

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Punitive Damages--Developments In Section 1983 Cases, Eileen Kaufman, Martin A. Schwartz

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Introduction (Symposium On Municipal Liability), Patricia E. Salkin

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Recent Developments In Civil Rights, Ivan E. Bodensteiner

Law Faculty Publications

One of the most significant developments in civil rights litigation is the expansion of immunity doctrines. Even though immunity is not mentioned in 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the United States Supreme Court has given some governmental officials the benefit of a qualified immunity from damages, and other officials an absolute immunity from damages.

In Lieu Of Preclusion: Reconciling Administrative Decisionmaking And Federal Civil Rights Claims, Marjorie A. Silver

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

A Critical Approach To Section 1983 With Special Attention To Sources Of Law, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

The Civil Rights Act of 1871¹ ("§ 1983") establishes a tort-like remedy for persons deprived of federally protected rights "under color of law."'² While the statute's broad language provides a remedy for violations of federal constitutional and statutory rights, the statute itself provides little or no guidance regarding important subjects such as the measure of damages, the availability of punitive damages, the requirements for equitable relief, the statute of limitations, survival of claims, proper parties, and immunities from suit.³...

...The first part of this article examines the narrowly "legal" analysis of § 1983 in the cases …

The Qualified Immunity Doctrine In The Supreme Court: Judicial Activism And The Restriction Of Constitutional Rights, David Rudovsky

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Preiser Puzzle: Continued Frustrating Conflict Between The Civil Rights And Habeas Corpus Remedies For State Prisoners, Martin A. Schwartz

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Letter To Professor Eric Neisser, Wendy J. Gordon

Scholarship Chronologically

It was good talking to you. As you know, I gained a great deal from the initial conversations with you and Jon on the Daniels/Davidson issue, and I appreciate your willingness to provide more feedback.

Wilson V. Garcia, Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Supreme Court Case Files

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of Section 1983: Sword And Shield, Charles F. Abernathy

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Robert H. Freilich and Richard G. Carlisle have collected sixteen essays from Volumes 11 through 15 of The Urban Lawyer-the journal which has most consistently followed developments in the law of section 1983-and published them as Section 1983: Sword and Shield. Prepared for the Section of Urban, State, and Local Government Law of the American Bar Association, this helpful volume provides a contemporary history of the development of the 1871 Civil Rights Act, from which section 1983 was derived.

Section 1983: Doctrinal Foundations And An Empirical Study, Theodore Eisenberg

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Civil Rights--Federal Jurisdiction--Exhaustion Of Adequate And Appropriate State Administrative Remedies Is A Prerequisite For Judicial Review Under Section 1983, Camilla E. Watson

Scholarly Works

Georgia Patsy, a white female secretary, brought a civil rights action under section 1983 of title 42 of the United States Code against Florida International University in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, alleging employment discrimination in violation of the Constitution and laws of the United States. The district court dismissed the action for failure to exhaust state administrative remedies. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed on the ground that failure to allege exhaustion of state remedies did not preclude a section 1983 cause of action. On rehearing en banc, the court …

The Realities Of Prisoners' Cases Under 42 U.S.C. § 1983: A Statistical Survey In The Northern District Of Illinois, William S. Bailey

Articles

The purpose of this article is to examine how prisoner section 1983 claims are treated, on a day to day basis, in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. To this end, all of the available prisoner section 1983 cases filed in the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division in the years 1971 and 1973 have been reviewed. This material provides the data base for an analysis of the following issues: the veracity of the burden on the courts argument; the variations in the level of consideration given to different categories of prisoner section 1983 claims; …