"Police officers have qualified immunity," Garrett told me.
In 1997, the Supreme Court ruled that people employed by private prisons were not entitled to qualified immunity.
The question for the court today in Hope v. Pelzer, No. 01-309, whetherthis this was the correct approach to what is known as qualified immunity.
So as not to impede their ability to do their jobs, law enforcement officers are also protected against liability, under a legal doctrine called qualified immunity.
With "reasonableness" being the test both for qualified immunity and for the constitutional right itself, the lower federal courts have not been able to agree on whether a finding that force was excessive -- in other words, unreasonable -- necessarily precludes a finding of qualified immunity.
When the purpose is "to investigate or pre-emptively detain a suspect," at most a prosecutor is entitled to qualified immunity.
The concept of qualified immunity becomes analytically complex when, as in the case today, the question is the right under the Fourth Amendment to be free of unreasonable seizure.
In a 6-to-3 decision dismissing a suit against a military police officer who dragged a demonstrator away from a speech by Vice President Al Gore, the justices expanded a doctrine known as qualified immunity.
The main hurdle was a 1997 decision of the court, Richardson v. McKnight, which ruled that people employed by private prisons were not entitled to qualified immunity while those who worked for prisons run by the government were.
When the names of these elite universities serve as an inoculation against accusations of insufficient qualifications and grant their graduates qualified immunity in confirmation battles, those universities acquire a quasi-governmental power.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the 1997 case retained its force and that "it does not follow" from Tuesday's ruling "that every private individual who works for the government in some capacity necessarily may claim qualified immunity".
