Resources

Cato Amicus Briefs

• • Allah v. Milling (Supreme Court)
  • Pauly v. White (Supreme Court)
  • Rafferty v. Trumbull County (Sixth Circuit)
  • Spencer v. Abbott (Supreme Court)
  • Williams v. Cline (Seventh Circuit)

Statutory materials

• 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (“Section 1983”)—Our primary federal civil rights statute, which made public officials liable for infringements on constitutional liberties.

Major Supreme Court cases

• Little v. Barreme, 6 U.S. (2 Cranch) 170 (1804)—early case that considered and rejected a good-faith defense for government agent acting unlawfully
• Myers v. Anderson, 238 U.S. 368 (1915)—rejecting application of good-faith defense to claims brought under Section 1983
• Pierson v. Ray, 386 U.S. 547 (1967)—first Supreme Court cases recognizing qualified immunity
• Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800 (1982)—case that established qualified immunity in its modern, basing the doctrine on whether the defendant’s conduct violated “clearly established law”
• Ziglar v. Abbasi, 137 S. Ct. 1843 (2017)—granting qualified immunity on a civil conspiracy claim; notable for Justice Thomas’s concurrence, criticizing the Court’s qualified immunity jurisprudence and urging the Court to reconsider the doctrine
• Kisela v. Hughes, 138 S. Ct. 1152 (2018)—granting qualified immunity to police officer who shot a woman who posed no threat and committed no crime; notable for Justice Sotomayor’s dissent (joined by Justice Ginsburg) criticizing qualified immunity as an “absolute shield for law enforcement officers” that “gut[s] the deterrent effect of the Fourth Amendment”

Academic resources

• William Baude, Is Qualified Immunity Unlawful?, 106 Calif. L. Rev. 45 (2018)
• Karen M. Blum, Qualified Immunity: Time to Change the Message, 93 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1885 (forthcoming 2018)
• Alexander A. Reinert, Does Qualified Immunity Matter?, 8 U. St. Thomas L.J. 477 (2011)
• Joanna C. Schwartz, How Qualified Immunity Fails, 127 Yale L.J. 2 (2017)
• Joanna C. Schwartz, Police Indemnification, 89 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 885 (2014)
• Joanna C. Schwartz, The Case Against Qualified Immunity, 93 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1797 (forthcoming 2018)

Other notable cases & articles

• Thompson v. Clark, No. 14-CV-7349, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 105225 (E.D.N.Y. June 11, 2018) (discussing how qualified immunity “has recently come under attack as over-protective of police and at odds with the original purpose of section 1983”)
• Lynn Adelman, The Supreme Court’s Quiet Assault on Civil Rights, Dissent (Fall 2017) (essay by judge on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin)
• Jon O. Newman, Opinion, Here’s a Better Way to Punish the Police: Sue Them for Money, Wash. Post (June 23, 2016), (op-ed by senior judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit)