The History of Judicial Immunity

Bradley v. Fisher (1872): the cornerstone Bradley v. Fisher, 80 U.S. (13 Wall.) 335 (1872), is the decision that made absolute judicial immunity American law. Its facts repay attention, because they are not the facts of a conscientious judge beset by a vexatious litigant. They are the facts of a summary punishment imposed without notice, without a hearing, and on a factual account the punished man denied.

In June 1867, John H. Surratt went on trial in the Criminal Court of the District of Columbia for the murder of Abraham Lincoln. Joseph H. Bradley was one of Surratt's defense attorneys. Judge George P. Fisher presided. On August 10, when the jury deadlocked and was discharged, the court immediately directed an order to be entered striking Bradley's name from the roll of attorneys practicing there.

The order recited that five weeks earlier, on July 2, during a recess, Bradley had accosted the judge "in a rude and insulting manner" as he descended from the bench and had threatened him with "personal chastisement." Bradley disputed that account. No notice had been given, no complaint had been filed, and no opportunity to respond had been offered before the order issued.

The Supreme Court affirmed the judgment against him, and Justice Stephen Field, writing for the majority, swept away the qualification he had left standing in Randall:

"[W]e are clear, from them, as well as from the principle on which any exemption is maintained, that the qualifying words used were not necessary to a correct statement of the law, and that judges of courts of superior or general jurisdiction are not liable to civil actions for their judicial acts, even when such acts are in excess of their jurisdiction, and are alleged to have been done maliciously or corruptly."

On whether Bradley could prove the recital false, the Court was blunt: "It is not necessary for us to determine in this case whether under any circumstances the verity of this record can be impeached. It is sufficient to observe that it cannot be impeached in this action or in any civil action against the defendant." Whether the recited facts were true became, for purposes of the lawsuit, a question no court would answer.

Field then drew the line that governs to this day: "A distinction must be here observed between excess of jurisdiction and the clear absence of all jurisdiction over the subject-matter." He illustrated it with an example repeated ever since. A probate judge who undertook to try a criminal case would act in the clear absence of all jurisdiction and would answer for it. A criminal court judge who convicted a defendant of a nonexistent offense, or imposed a sentence the law did not permit, would merely exceed his jurisdiction and would be immune.

Field rested the holding on two assertions of fact. Absolute immunity, he wrote, "has been the settled doctrine of the English courts for many centuries, and has never been denied, that we are aware of, in the courts of this country." And he offered, in exchange for it, the bargain that has sustained the doctrine ever since:

"Against the consequences of their erroneous or irregular action, from whatever motives proceeding, the law has provided for private parties numerous remedies, and to those remedies they must, in such cases, resort. But for malice or corruption in their action whilst exercising their judicial functions within the general scope of their jurisdiction, the judges of these courts can only be reached by public prosecution in the form of impeachment, or in such other form as may be specially prescribed."

Field also conceded the procedural violation outright, acknowledging that "[t]he Criminal Court of the District erred in not citing the plaintiff, before making the order striking his name from the roll of its attorneys, to show cause why such order should not be made for the offensive language and conduct stated, and affording him opportunity for explanation, or defence, or apology." He then held the error immaterial: "But this erroneous manner in which its jurisdiction was exercised, however it may have affected the validity of the act, did not make the act any less a judicial act."

Both of Field's factual assertions were mistaken, and the bargain he offered has not been honored. Part V takes up each in turn.

The dissent that is never quoted

Bradley was not unanimous. Justice David Davis, joined by Justice Nathan Clifford, dissented in terms that describe the reform position of the present day with precision:

"I agree that judicial officers are exempt from responsibility in a civil action for all their judicial acts in respect to matters of controversy within their jurisdiction. I agree, further, that judges of superior or general authority are equally exempt from liability, even when they have exceeded their jurisdiction, unless the acts complained of were done maliciously or corruptly. But I dissent from the rule laid down by the majority of the court, that a judge is exempt from liability in a case like the present, where it is alleged not only that his proceeding was in excess of jurisdiction, but that he acted maliciously and corruptly. If he did so, he is, in my opinion, subject to suit the same as a private person would be under like circumstances."

Two Justices of the Supreme Court held, in 1872, that a corrupt judge ought to answer as anyone else would answer. They were defeated by a vote rather than by an argument, and no member of the majority ever met the point they raised.

Pierson v. Ray (1967): immunity survives the civil rights statutes

Section 1 of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, ch. 22, 17 Stat. 13, now codified at 42 U.S.C. § 1983, provides that every person who under color of state law subjects another to the deprivation of federal constitutional rights "shall be liable to the party injured." The statute contains no exemption for judges and never has.

In Pierson v. Ray, 386 U.S. 547 (1967), the Court held that judicial immunity survives it intact — and the facts of that case deserve to be as familiar as the holding. In 1961, a group of fifteen white and Black Episcopal clergymen attempted to use segregated facilities at an interstate bus terminal in Jackson, Mississippi. Jackson police arrested them under a Mississippi statute making it a misdemeanor to congregate in a public place under circumstances that might occasion a breach of the peace and to refuse a police order to move on. They were convicted by Judge Spencer, a municipal police justice, and each received the maximum sentence of four months in jail and a $200 fine. On appeal, one petitioner obtained a trial de novo and a directed verdict, after which the remaining cases were dropped.

When the clergymen sued under § 1983, they argued that judges were "the essential cog in a system of sham justice, in the enforcement of segregation," and that Spencer "and others like him are the very persons the 1871 Congress sought to make liable." Reasoning by analogy to Tenney v. Brandhove, 341 U.S. 367 (1951), which had preserved legislative immunity under the same statute, the Court disagreed:

"We do not believe that this settled principle of law was abolished by § 1983.... The legislative record gives no clear indication that Congress meant to abolish wholesale all common-law immunities.... The immunity of judges for acts within the judicial role is equally well established, and we presume that Congress would have specifically so provided had it wished to abolish the doctrine."

Justice William O. Douglas dissented, and his objection was as plain as the statute: "To most, 'every person' would mean every person, not every person except judges." He then walked through the floor debates, quoting members of the enacting Congress who contemplated the very liability the majority was denying. He was right about the record, as Part IV shows.

Stump v. Sparkman (1978): the reach of the doctrine, revealed

Stump v. Sparkman, 435 U.S. 349 (1978), made judicial immunity notorious, and it remains the governing modern authority.

On July 9, 1971, Ora Spitler McFarlin presented Judge Harold D. Stump of the DeKalb County Circuit Court in Indiana with a document captioned "Petition To Have Tubal Ligation Performed On Minor and Indemnity Agreement." In it she stated under oath that her fifteen-year-old daughter, Linda Spitler, was "somewhat retarded" — though the petition conceded in the same breath that Linda attended public school and had been promoted with her class every year — and had been staying out overnight with "older youth or young men." She asked the court to authorize her daughter's sterilization, and in the same instrument agreed to indemnify the physician and the hospital against any lawsuit that might follow.

Judge Stump approved the petition that day. There was no docket number. Nothing was filed with the clerk. Linda received no notice, no hearing was held, and no guardian ad litem was appointed to represent her. She was never told the proceeding had happened at all.

On July 15 she entered DeKalb Memorial Hospital having been told she was to have her appendix removed. The following day she was sterilized. She was discharged several days later, unaware of what had been done to her, and learned the truth roughly two years afterward, when she married and could not conceive.

She sued under § 1983. The Seventh Circuit held that Judge Stump had acted outside his jurisdiction and had in any event forfeited immunity "because of his failure to comply with elementary principles of procedural due process." The Supreme Court reversed, five votes to three. On jurisdiction, the Court reasoned that Indiana's circuit courts enjoyed a broad general grant of authority, and that although no statute had authorized what Judge Stump did, "it is more significant that there was no Indiana statute and no case law in 1971 prohibiting a circuit court... from considering a petition of the type presented to Judge Stump." The absence of a prohibition became a grant of power. The Court added, for good measure, that "the scope of the judge's jurisdiction must be construed broadly where the issue is the immunity of the judge."

On whether the approval was a "judicial act," the Court announced the test still applied today: whether the act is "a function normally performed by a judge," and whether the parties "dealt with the judge in his judicial capacity." Both conditions were satisfied, the majority held, because state judges of general jurisdiction "not infrequently are called upon in their official capacity to approve petitions relating to the affairs of minors," and because Judge Stump had signed the instrument as "Judge, DeKalb Circuit Court."

As to the procedural failures, the Court was categorical: "A judge is absolutely immune from liability for his judicial acts even if his exercise of authority is flawed by the commission of grave procedural errors." As to the consequences: "Disagreement with the action taken by the judge, however, does not justify depriving that judge of his immunity."

Justice Potter Stewart, joined by Justices Thurgood Marshall and Lewis Powell, dissented. To the majority's assertion that Judge Stump had performed a function normally performed by a judge, he answered that no such function existed: "In sum, what Judge Stump did on July 9, 1971, was in no way an act 'normally performed by a judge.' Indeed, there is no reason to believe that such an act has ever been performed by any other Indiana judge, either before or since."

To the alternative rationale — that Judge Stump had said he was acting as a judge — Stewart supplied the sentence for which the dissent is remembered: "But the conduct of a judge surely does not become a judicial act merely on his own say-so. A judge is not free, like a loose cannon, to inflict indiscriminate damage whenever he announces that he is acting in his judicial capacity."

Measuring the conduct against the reasons the immunity exists at all, he found none of them present: "There was no 'case,' controversial or otherwise. There were no litigants. There was and could be no appeal. And there was not even the pretext of principled decisionmaking. The total absence of any of these normal attributes of a judicial proceeding convinces me that the conduct complained of in this case was not a judicial act." He closed by observing that "if intimidation would serve to deter its recurrence, that would surely be in the public interest."

Justice Powell wrote separately, and his opinion contains the single most consequential observation in the whole body of judicial immunity law. Bradley had justified sacrificing individual rights on the express ground that other avenues of relief remained open. Powell identified what happens when a judge's own conduct forecloses them:

"Underlying the Bradley immunity, then, is the notion that private rights can be sacrificed in some degree to the achievement of the greater public good deriving from a completely independent judiciary, because there exist alternative forums and methods for vindicating those rights. But where a judicial officer acts in a manner that precludes all resort to appellate or other judicial remedies that otherwise would be available, the underlying assumption of the Bradley doctrine is inoperative."

Where the judge destroys the record, there is nothing from which to appeal. The bargain collapses at exactly the moment it is most needed, and the majority offered no reply.

Mireles v. Waco (1991): the outer edge

In November 1989 a Los Angeles County public defender named Howard Waco failed to appear for the initial call of Judge Raymond Mireles' morning calendar in Van Nuys, California. Waco alleged that the judge, "angered by the absence of attorneys from his courtroom," directed police officers "to forcibly and with excessive force seize and bring plaintiff into his courtroom"; that the officers seized him with unreasonable force, dragged him backward out of another courtroom, cursed him, called him "vulgar and offensive names," and slammed him through the doors into Judge Mireles' courtroom; and that the judge "knowingly and deliberately approved and ratified" all of it.

The Ninth Circuit held that a judge who authorizes the use of excessive force is not performing a judicial act. Without briefing and without argument, the Supreme Court summarily reversed in a per curiam opinion, Mireles v. Waco, 502 U.S. 9 (1991), conceding the decisive point in the course of rejecting it: "Of course, a judge's direction to police officers to carry out a judicial order with excessive force is not a 'function normally performed by a judge.'"

Immunity attached nonetheless, the Court held, because the proper inquiry runs not to the particular act but to "the particular act's relation to a general function normally performed by a judge" — here, directing officers to bring counsel before the court. On jurisdiction, the Court reasoned that if Judge Mireles had "authorized and ratified the police officers' use of excessive force, he acted in excess of his authority," but that such an action, "taken in the very aid of the judge's jurisdiction over a matter before him — cannot be said to have been taken in the absence of jurisdiction."

Justice John Paul Stevens dissented, drawing a distinction the majority never engaged:

"[P]etitioner issued two commands to the police officers. He ordered them to bring respondent into his courtroom, and he ordered them to commit a battery. The first order was an action taken in a judicial capacity; the second clearly was not. Ordering a battery has no relation to a function normally performed by a judge. If an interval of a minute or two had separated the two orders, it would be undeniable that no immunity would attach to the latter order. The fact that both are alleged to have occurred as part of the same communication does not enlarge the judge's immunity."

Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by Justice Anthony Kennedy, also dissented, on the ground that summary reversal is reserved for cases in which the law is settled and the decision below is plainly wrong, and this case was neither: "I frankly am unsure whether the Court's disposition or Justice Stevens' favored disposition is correct; but I am sure that, if we are to decide this case, we should not do so without briefing and argument." Three Justices thought the question genuinely difficult. It was decided without briefing or argument all the same.

IV. Support and Opposition: What Was Actually Argued

The case made for immunity

The arguments advanced in favor of the doctrine have been remarkably stable across four centuries, and they deserve to be stated at their strongest.

• Finality. Without immunity, in Coke's phrase, "controversies will be infinite," because every losing party would sue the judge and no litigation would ever truly conclude.

• Independence. As Justice Field put it in Bradley, a judicial officer must "be free to act upon his own convictions, without apprehension of personal consequences to himself." Liability "would destroy that independence without which no judiciary can be either respectable or useful."

• The public's benefit, not the judge's. English courts framed this most cleanly in Scott v. Stansfield (1868), quoted approvingly in Bradley: the rule exists "not for the protection or benefit of a malicious or corrupt judge, but for the benefit of the public, whose interest it is that the judges should be at liberty to exercise their functions with independence, and without fear of consequences."

• Pleading is cheap. Field's most practical point was that malice can always be alleged. "Few persons sufficiently irritated to institute an action against a judge for his judicial acts would hesitate to ascribe any character to the acts which would be essential to the maintenance of the action." Permit a malice exception, the argument runs, and every disappointed litigant will plead malice.

• Alternative remedies exist. Appeal, mandamus, discipline, impeachment, and criminal prosecution.

These are serious arguments. The fifth is the wall on which the whole structure rests, and it is the one that has given way.

The case made against it, by the people who were there

In the courts. Justices Davis and Clifford dissented in Bradley itself, in the very decision that created the American doctrine. Justices Stewart, Marshall, and Powell dissented in Stump. Justices Stevens, Scalia, and Kennedy dissented in Mireles. Absolute judicial immunity has never been a doctrine of comfortable consensus. It is a doctrine of narrow majorities and unanswered objections.

In Congress, in 1866. The Civil Rights Act of 1866, ch. 31, § 2, 14 Stat. 27, made it a criminal offense for any person acting under color of law to subject any inhabitant to a deprivation of protected rights. President Andrew Johnson vetoed the bill, and his stated objection was precisely that it would reach judges. State judges who rendered judgments contrary to the Act, he warned, would "be brought before other tribunals and there subjected to fine and imprisonment for the performance of the duties which such State laws might impose."

Senator Lyman Trumbull, who had authored the bill, did not deny the charge. He adopted it: "I admit that a ministerial officer or a judge, if he acts corruptly or viciously in the execution or under color of an illegal act, may be and ought to be punished; but if he acted innocently the judge would not be punished." He then framed the principle at stake in words that could serve as the charter of judicial accountability work today:

"The assumption that State judges and other officials are not to be held responsible for violations of United States laws, when done under color of State statutes or customs, is akin to the maxim of the English law that the King can do no wrong. It places officials above the law. It is the very doctrine out of which the [Civil War] was hatched."

Representative William Lawrence of Ohio answered Johnson's objection that the bill invaded the judicial power of the states by conceding the premise and rejecting the conclusion: "I answer it is better to invade the judicial power of the State than permit it to invade, strike down, and destroy the civil rights of citizens. A judicial power perverted to such uses should be speedily invaded."

Congress overrode the veto. That statute survives as 18 U.S.C. § 242, and the Supreme Court has consistently held that judges enjoy no immunity from prosecution under it. See O'Shea v. Littleton, 414 U.S. 488, 503 (1974); Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U.S. 409, 429 (1976); Dennis v. Sparks, 449 U.S. 24, 31 (1980).

In Congress, in 1871. Section 1 of the Ku Klux Klan Act, now § 1983, was drafted by Representative Samuel Shellabarger, who told the House without equivocation that its model "will be found in the second section of the act of April 9, 1866, known as the 'civil rights act,'" and that the new section provided a civil remedy in "identically the same case" for which the earlier statute had supplied a criminal one. It reached further, since it dropped the 1866 Act's limitation to race and, unlike the criminal provision, imposed no requirement of willfulness.

The opponents understood exactly what that meant, and said so. Representative William Evans Arthur of Kentucky protested that "[h]itherto, in all the history of this country and of England, no judge or court has been held liable, civilly or criminally, for judicial acts," and warned that under section 1 every state judge "will enter upon and pursue the call of official duty with the sword of Damocles suspended over him by a silken thread." Representative Joseph Horace Lewis of Kentucky objected that the section rendered a state judge "liable to a suit in the Federal court and subject to damages for his decision against a suitor, however honest and conscientious that decision may be."

The supporters understood it as well, and that was the entire point. Representative David Perley Lowe of Kansas observed that the "records of the [state] tribunals are searched in vain for any evidence of effective redress." Representative Aaron Fyfe Perry of Ohio put it more bitingly: "judges, having ears to hear, hear not." Representative Joseph Hayne Rainey of South Carolina told the House that "the courts are in many instances under the control of those who are wholly inimical to the impartial administration of law and equity."

The critical point is this. In 1866, and again in 1871, supporters and opponents alike proceeded on the shared assumption that these statutes reached judges. They disagreed only about whether that was a wise thing to do. No member of either Congress argued that it was not happening.

Ninety-six years later the Supreme Court held in Pierson that it would "presume that Congress would have specifically so provided had it wished to abolish the doctrine." That presumption was applied to a Congress that had discussed judges by name, at length, on the floor, on both sides of the aisle — and that had written a statute reaching "every person."

V. The Warning Signs

The doctrine did not decay slowly over time. The evidence that it was unsound was on the record before the ink had dried, and it accumulated from the first case forward.

One: the founding case suppressed the evidence against the judge. In Floyd v. Barker, the Star Chamber ordered the complaint destroyed rather than examined. A doctrine that begins by defacing the record is poorly positioned to promise that other remedies will do the work the courts refuse to do.

Two: the first American application was itself an abuse. In Bradley, an attorney was struck from the roll of a court without notice, without a hearing, and without a charge, on the strength of a factual recital he disputed — and the Court held that the recital could not be challenged in any civil action against the judge. Justice Field conceded the procedural violation outright and then held the error immaterial. The rule was announced in the very case that demonstrated why the rule is dangerous.

Three: the Court deleted a limitation it had just declared necessary. In Randall, the malice qualifier was added specifically because the American authorities conflicted and required reconciliation. In Bradley, decided three years afterward, the Court disposed of the conflict by pronouncing the qualifying words "not necessary to a correct statement of the law." Two Justices dissented from that disposition, and the conflicting authorities were never addressed.

Four: the historical premise was false. Field wrote that absolute immunity "has never been denied, that we are aware of, in the courts of this country." Professor Jeffrey Shaman's survey of American law around 1871 found substantial variation: roughly thirteen states followed a rule of absolute immunity, six had held judges liable for malicious acts, nine had considered the question without resolving it, and nine had not considered it at all. A doctrine was announced as settled law at a moment when it was contested law, and the announcement itself did much to settle it.

Five: the English rule was narrower than the American rule claiming descent from it. In England, absolute immunity ran to the judges of superior courts, whose rulings could be appealed. Justices of the peace, whose decisions typically could not be, remained answerable for malicious acts. American law adopted the superior-court rule and applied it universally, discarding the appellate safety valve that had justified it.

Six: the doctrine changed sides without acknowledging it. Floyd protected judges from the Crown's courts; Bradley protected a judge from an injured citizen. Floyd concerned a criminal prosecution in a rival tribunal; Bradley concerned a civil action for damages brought by the person harmed. The transplant was performed without explanation, and the justification did not come with it.

Seven: the independence was never truly absolute — only absolute against the public. Eight years after Bradley, the Supreme Court had no difficulty permitting a Virginia county judge, J.D. Coles of Pittsylvania County, to be indicted in federal court for excluding Black citizens from his jury lists on account of race. Ex parte Virginia, 100 U.S. 339 (1880). The Court reasoned that the selection of jurors was a ministerial rather than a judicial function and upheld Congress's power to punish him, and it has cited the case ever since for the proposition that judicial immunity does not bar criminal liability. See Mireles, 502 U.S. at 10 n.1.

The independence that could not survive a damages action brought by a sterilized teenager survived a federal criminal indictment without difficulty. That tells you a great deal about what the doctrine actually protects, and from whom.

Eight: the promised remedies were promised rather than provided. Bradley instructed victims to resort to "numerous remedies" and assured them that a corrupt judge "can only be reached by public prosecution in the form of impeachment." In the entire history of the Republic, the House has impeached fifteen federal judges and the Senate has convicted eight, most recently in 2010. That is the enforcement machinery the Supreme Court offered in exchange for closing the courthouse door.

VI. Evolution: From a Narrow Protection to an Unqualified Shield

Across a century and a half the doctrine widened along five distinct axes. Each individual expansion was modest, and each was defensible on its own terms. Their cumulative effect is a shield of an altogether different character from the one Coke described.

1. State of mind ceased to matter

Randall left open the possibility of liability for malicious or corrupt acts in excess of jurisdiction, and Bradley closed it. Pierson restated the rule, holding that immunity "applies even when the judge is accused of acting maliciously and corruptly," and Mireles confirmed that it "is not overcome by allegations of bad faith or malice." Forrester v. White, 484 U.S. 219, 227 (1988), stated the proposition in its flattest form: a judicial act "does not become less judicial by virtue of an allegation of malice or corruption of motive." The doctrine therefore admits no exception for corruption and none for bribery. A judge's motive is not merely difficult to prove. It is legally irrelevant, which is a different and far more serious thing.

Dennis v. Sparks, 449 U.S. 24 (1980), shows what that means in practice. A judge of the 229th District Court of Duval County, Texas had enjoined oil production from leases owned by the plaintiffs, and an appellate court later dissolved the injunction as illegally issued. The allegation was that "an official act of the defendant judge was the product of a corrupt conspiracy involving bribery of the judge." The Supreme Court allowed the case to proceed against the private parties who paid the bribe, holding that they had acted under color of state law — and it did so while noting, without apparent difficulty, that "it is of no consequence in this respect that the judge himself is immune from damages liability."

2. The jurisdictional limit was narrowed nearly out of existence

Field's "clear absence of all jurisdiction" was already a demanding standard when he wrote it. Stump rendered it very nearly unreachable by holding that a judge's jurisdiction "must be construed broadly where the issue is the immunity of the judge," and that the absence of any rule prohibiting an act supports the jurisdiction to perform it. Mireles went further, holding that authorizing a battery was undertaken "in the very aid of the judge's jurisdiction" and therefore fell within it.

The operative question is no longer whether a judge possessed authority to do what he did. It is whether anyone can identify a rule that clearly and specifically removed the subject from that court's reach.

3. The "judicial act" became a category rather than an act

Stump held that an ex parte approval bearing no docket number, never filed, issued without notice, without hearing, without a guardian ad litem, and without any possibility of appeal was a judicial act. Mireles instructed courts to examine "the particular act's relation to a general function normally performed by a judge" rather than "the act itself," while expressly acknowledging that the act itself was not something judges normally do.

Within that framework, almost any misconduct can be traced backward to some general judicial function. Ordering a beating relates to summoning counsel. Selling a child to a detention facility relates to adjudicating delinquency.

4. The class of protected persons expanded far beyond judges

Because immunity attaches to functions rather than to offices, absolute immunity has migrated well outside the judiciary. It now covers:

• Federal administrative adjudicators — Butz v. Economou, 438 U.S. 478, 512–13 (1978)
• Prosecutors, for conduct "intimately associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process" — Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U.S. 409, 430 (1976)

• Immigration judges — e.g., Stevens v. Osuna, 877 F.3d 1293, 1304 (11th Cir. 2017)
• Medical licensing boards, mayors suspending liquor licenses, and local permitting boards, where the function is adjudicatory in character
• Court clerks, guardians ad litem, receivers, mediators, probation officers, court-appointed psychologists, and parole board members, under the label of "quasi-judicial" immunity Professor Margaret Z. Johns catalogued this migration in A Black Robe Is Not a Big Tent: The Improper Expansion of Absolute Judicial Immunity to Non-Judges in Civil-Rights Cases, 59 SMU L. Rev. 265 (2006), concluding that it "seriously undermines civil-rights enforcement, denies victims a remedy, and hinders the development of constitutional standards."

Imbler deserves particular notice, because it shows the doctrine reproducing itself in a new host. Paul Imbler was convicted of murder in a prosecution in which, it was alleged, the state had used false testimony and suppressed exculpatory evidence. The Supreme Court granted the prosecutor absolute immunity while conceding the price in the same breath, acknowledging that such immunity "does leave the genuinely wronged defendant without civil redress against a prosecutor whose malicious or dishonest action deprives him of liberty." The Court accepted that outcome and moved on.

5. Congress closed the last opening

In Pulliam v. Allen, 466 U.S. 522 (1984), the Supreme Court held that judicial immunity does not bar prospective injunctive relief, or an award of attorney's fees, against a judicial officer. Magistrate Gladys Pulliam of Culpeper County, Virginia had adopted a practice of imposing bail on persons arrested for nonjailable misdemeanors and jailing those who could not pay. A federal court enjoined the practice and awarded fees, and the Supreme Court affirmed, tracing the English prerogative writs to show that the common law had never immunized judges from prospective collateral relief.

Congress reversed that holding in section 309 of the Federal Courts Improvement Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-317, § 309(c), 110 Stat. 3847, 3853, which amended § 1983 itself and placed the operative words at the very end of the statute:

"except that in any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer's judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable."

The same Act amended 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b) so that a judicial officer "shall not be held liable for any costs, including attorney's fees, unless such action was clearly in excess of such officer's jurisdiction" — a standard nearly identical to the immunity threshold itself. Lower courts have applied both amendments exactly as written; the Eleventh Circuit collected their effect in Bolin v. Story, 225 F.3d 1234 (11th Cir. 2000).

Understand the sequence. The Supreme Court identified a single narrow avenue of relief — not damages, not punishment, merely an order directing a judicial officer to stop an unconstitutional practice going forward — and Congress, at the judiciary's sustained urging and after a decade of successive bills, legislated that avenue closed. The direction of travel

In more than a century and a half, the Supreme Court has meaningfully narrowed the doctrine on exactly two occasions.

In Forrester v. White, 484 U.S. 219 (1988), Illinois Circuit Judge Howard Lee White, who demoted and discharged probation officer Cynthia Forrester allegedly because of her sex, was held to have performed an administrative rather than a judicial act and to have no absolute immunity. The Seventh Circuit had held otherwise, and Judge Richard Posner dissented below in a passage the Supreme Court adopted, describing absolute immunity as "strong medicine, justified only when the danger of [officials' being] deflect[ed from the effective performance of their duties] is very great." In Antoine v. Byers & Anderson, Inc., 508 U.S. 429 (1993), the Court held that court reporters are not absolutely immune for failing to produce a transcript.

Lower courts have added a handful of exceptions of their own, and the pattern in each is that the judge stepped outside the case entirely:

• Gregory v. Thompson, 500 F.2d 59 (9th Cir. 1974) — Arizona Justice of the Peace John J. Thompson assaulted Douglas Gregory, a 65-year-old retired actor, in his own courtroom. No immunity; the jury awarded $1,500 in actual and $500 in punitive damages. • Zarcone v. Perry, 572 F.2d 52 (2d Cir. 1978) — Suffolk County Judge William M. Perry had coffee vendor Thomas Zarcone handcuffed and marched into his chambers because he found the coffee "putrid"; the Second Circuit affirmed an award of $80,000 compensatory and $60,000 punitive damages. • Harris v. Harvey, 605 F.2d 330 (7th Cir. 1979) — Racine County Judge Richard G. Harvey, Jr. conducted a racially motivated campaign against Sylvester Harris, a Racine police lieutenant. The jury found the acts racially motivated, and liability attached to the non-judicial ones. • Lopez v. Vanderwater, 620 F.2d 1229 (7th Cir. 1980) — Illinois Judge William Vanderwater arrested Flor Lopez, charged him with petty theft, convicted him on a guilty plea alleged to have been forged, and sentenced him to 240 days, all near midnight in an Aurora police station with no prosecutor, defense attorney, court reporter, or clerk present. He kept immunity for the arraignment, conviction, and sentence, and lost it only for the prosecutorial acts. • Harper v. Merckle, 638 F.2d 848 (5th Cir. 1981) — Hillsborough County, Florida Judge Arden Mays Merckle used his office against Jack R. Harper as "an offensive weapon to vindicate personal objectives," in a matter no party had brought before him. No judicial act, and no immunity. • Archie v. Lanier, 95 F.3d 438, 441 (6th Cir. 1996) — Tennessee Chancery Judge David Lanier, who stalked and sexually assaulted women in his chambers, had no immunity: "The fact that, regrettably, Lanier happened to be a judge when he committed these reprehensible acts is not relevant to the question of whether he is entitled to immunity. Clearly he is not." The same judge's criminal conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 242 reached the Supreme Court in United States v. Lanier, 520 U.S. 259 (1997). Stated honestly, that is close to the full inventory: employment decisions, transcript production, physical assault, sexual assault, prosecuting your own case, and hauling a food vendor in irons over a bad cup of coffee. Everything a judge does on the bench, in a case, to a litigant remains absolutely immune, however corrupt the motive behind it.

The counter-example is Ashelman v. Pope, 793 F.2d 1072 (9th Cir. 1986) (en banc), where the Ninth Circuit, sitting as a full court, held Mohave County Judge Gary Pope and the county prosecutor immune against Kenneth O. Ashelman's allegation that they had "conspired to predetermine the outcome of judicial proceedings." The court reasoned that "[i]ntent should play no role in the immunity analysis."

VII. What the Shield Protects Today

Luzerne County: children sold by the day

Between 2003 and 2008, Judges Mark A. Ciavarella, Jr. and Michael T. Conahan of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania accepted approximately $2.8 million in payments connected to two for- profit juvenile detention facilities. Conahan helped close the county-run detention center. Ciavarella, presiding over juvenile court, enforced a zero-tolerance policy that funneled children into the private ones. Children as young as eight were detained, many of them first offenders and many without counsel, for conduct as trivial as truancy and petty theft.

Ciavarella was sentenced to 28 years in federal prison and Conahan to more than 17. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court vacated roughly 4,000 juvenile adjudications involving more than 2,300 children, holding that it could not have confidence that any juvenile matter Ciavarella handled during the relevant period had been tried fairly.

And in the victims' federal civil rights action, the judges' courtroom conduct was held absolutely immune.

In Wallace v. Powell, No. 3:09-cv-286, 2009 WL 4051974 (M.D. Pa. Nov. 20, 2009), the district court held that the delinquency determinations Ciavarella entered and the sentences he imposed were judicial acts, that Conahan's orders were judicial acts, and that "the alleged motivations, be they corrupt or with malice, are irrelevant to this determination." The court rejected the argument that unconstitutional conduct destroys jurisdiction, reasoning that if it did, every constitutional tort committed by a judge would defeat immunity. Liability attached only to what the judges had done outside the courtroom — the agreements with the facility's owner and builder, the budget maneuvering, the advocacy for building the center, and the coercion of probation officers.

The litigation did eventually produce a judgment. In August 2022, Judge Christopher Conner awarded $106 million in compensatory damages and $100 million in punitive damages to roughly 300 plaintiffs, calculating compensatory damages at a base rate of $1,000 for each day of wrongful detention. He wrote that the plaintiffs were "the tragic human casualties of a scandal of epic proportions" and that the judges "abandoned their oath and breached the public trust." Several of the plaintiffs had died of overdose or suicide during the thirteen years the case consumed, and counsel did not expect the judges to hold assets sufficient to satisfy any part of the award.

There is a postscript. In December 2024, President Biden commuted the remainder of Conahan's sentence as part of a mass commutation of roughly 1,500 people already in home confinement. Conahan had been released to home confinement in 2020 under a COVID-19 program with six years left to serve.

Luzerne County represents the most favorable outcome the present system is capable of producing. Two judges took millions of dollars to imprison children, and it required a federal racketeering prosecution, an extraordinary intervention by the state's highest court, and thirteen years of civil litigation to establish liability — after which the sentencing decisions themselves, the acts that put children in cells, remained absolutely immune.

The alternative remedies, measured

Bradley directed victims to "numerous remedies." Those remedies can now be counted.

Federal judicial discipline. Under the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act of 1980, 28 U.S.C. §§ 351–364, any person may file a complaint alleging that a federal judge has engaged in "conduct prejudicial to the effective and expeditious administration of the business of the courts." Complaints are investigated and decided by federal judges. The Act does not apply to the Supreme Court at all.

The Administrative Office of the United States Courts publishes the results annually in Table S-22. From the table for the twelve months ending September 30, 2025:

FY FY 2025 2024 Complaints commenced 1,857 1,510 Complaints terminated as final 1,713 1,596

Complaints dismissed in whole or in part 1,700 1,710 Dismissed as merits-related 1,454 1,362 Petitions for review received 644 522 Chief judge's disposition affirmed, petition denied 644 519 Matters returned to a chief judge 0 0 Remedial action — censure or reprimand 0 3 Remedial action — suspension of assignments 0 0 Remedial action — against a magistrate judge 0 0 Remedial action — removal of a bankruptcy judge 0 0 Remedial action — request for voluntary 0 1 retirement Remedial action — certification of disability 0 0

In the twelve months ending September 30, 2025, the federal judiciary resolved 1,713 complaints against its own members and imposed formal remedial action in none of them. Of the 644 petitions asking a judicial council to review a chief judge's disposition, 644 were denied and the chief judge's disposition affirmed; not one matter was returned for further consideration. Four complaints were resolved through what the table calls "voluntary corrective action." Three were referred to a special committee. Eighteen complaints alleged the acceptance of a bribe, gift, or favor.

The system's own definition of its jurisdiction accounts for much of this. The largest single category of dismissal is "merits-related," which covers 1,454 of the FY 2025 dismissals — meaning the complaint concerned what the judge decided, and a complaint about what a judge decided is not cognizable as misconduct. The complaint about the decision goes to discipline, which will not hear it. The appeal goes to the appellate court, which reviews the ruling and imposes nothing on the judge. Neither forum ever reaches the judge personally, and that is the design rather than a malfunction.

What happens in the rare case that clears every hurdle is instructive, and one such case is now fully documented in the public record.

On February 11, 2026, the Judicial Council of the Eleventh Circuit issued an order in Complaint No. 11-25-90212 adopting a special committee's findings against U.S. District Judge Eleanor L. Ross of the Northern District of Georgia. The committee made three findings of judicial misconduct:

1. Improper sexual activity in chambers with a law enforcement officer. The judge conducted an extramarital affair with an officer and engaged in sexual activity in her chambers, at times while law clerks were present in chambers and within earshot of her office. 2. Attendance at a partisan political event, which the committee found "had the potential to erode public confidence in the independent and non-partisan nature of the judiciary." 3. Lack of candor — making false statements to Chief Judge William Pryor and to her own chief district judge, including a false denial of the sexual conduct. The committee wrote that "there is no excuse for the egregious falsities the Subject Judge submitted to fellow judges." The proceeding began when a term law clerk seated immediately outside the judge's office reported what she had seen and heard. In her initial response, Judge Ross suggested that the clerk was retaliating over performance criticism and may have fabricated the allegations.

The sanction was a private reprimand. Judge Ross additionally agreed to issue apology letters to six former law clerks, to forego service as chief judge of her district if she became otherwise eligible, and to refrain indefinitely from serving on any Judicial Conference committee. The order did not name her. The Judicial Conference's Committee on Judicial Conduct and Disability affirmed it on May 22, 2026, and Judge Ross's identity became officially known only on June 10 and 11, 2026 — four months after the sanction issued — when Chief Judge Pryor wrote to her about the adequacy of her apology letters, and only because four of the former clerks had objected that the three-sentence letters they received did not comply with the Council's order. The replacement letter Judge Ross sent on June 11 contained the sentence: "I [apologize] for my false accusation against you."

Two members of Congress have since introduced resolutions to impeach her. H.Res. 1346 and H.Res. 1351, 119th Cong. (2026).

State judicial discipline. In 2020 Reuters published "The Teflon Robe," a nationwide investigation by Michael Berens and John Shiffman. The reporters reviewed 1,509 cases from 2008 through 2019 in which judges resigned, retired, or were publicly disciplined following accusations of misconduct, together with a further 3,613 cases from 2008 through 2018 in which states disciplined judges but withheld from the public the details of the offense, including the identity of the judge. The investigation found that nine of every ten sanctioned judges were permitted to return to the bench.

Impeachment. The House has impeached fifteen federal judges since 1789. The Senate has convicted eight, most recently G. Thomas Porteous, Jr. in December 2010.

Appeal. Appeal is the remedy most frequently invoked and the least responsive to the injuries immunity actually covers. An appellate court cannot restore fertility, cannot return years spent in confinement, and cannot be invoked at all by a person who was never a party. It costs the erring judge nothing. And where, as Justice Powell observed in Stump, the judge's own conduct has prevented a reviewable record from coming into existence, there is nothing from which an appeal can be taken.

Criminal prosecution. This remedy is real but exceedingly rare, and it lies entirely in the hands of prosecutors — many of whom appear before the judge in question daily, and all of whom enjoy absolute immunity of their own.

VIII. The Case for Ending It

Judicial immunity today is neither the doctrine Coke described nor the doctrine the Supreme Court justified. It has become an unqualified shield that attaches to nearly anything a judge does in the course of a case, that is unaffected by malice, corruption, or bribery, that has been extended to a widening class of officials who are not judges at all, and that is backed by a disciplinary apparatus which, in fiscal year 2025, imposed formal sanction on no federal judge out of 1,713 complaints resolved.

The argument for ending it does not depend on hostility toward judges. It can be made entirely from the doctrine's own materials. It rests on a historical claim the record does not support. Field's assertion in Bradley that absolute immunity had "never been denied" in the courts of this country was inaccurate when he wrote it, at a time when at least six states held judges answerable for malicious acts. The English rule he invoked was narrower than the one he adopted, and it had been calibrated to the availability of appellate review — a calibration American law discarded without explanation.

It rests on a statutory claim the legislative record contradicts. Pierson presumed that Congress would have said so expressly had it intended to abolish judicial immunity. Congress wrote "every person." Its members debated judges by name, at length, in 1866 and again in 1871. The sponsor of the 1871 Act told the House that section 1 was modeled on a criminal statute that indisputably reaches judges and was designed to reach further still, and the opponents objected on precisely that ground and lost the vote.

It rests on a bargain that has not been kept. Bradley traded individual redress for institutional independence on the express representation that other remedies existed. Those remedies are now measurable, and the measurements appear above. They do not exist in any sense a person who has been injured would recognize.

And nothing requires it. Judicial immunity is a creature of the common law. It was never enacted, and Congress could modify it in a single sentence — exactly as Congress modified § 1983 in 1996, this time running in the opposite direction. Justice Davis showed in 1872 what a workable rule looks like: immunity for judicial acts taken within jurisdiction, and liability where the judge acted maliciously or corruptly. Every other official in American government, including police officers who make life-and-death decisions in seconds and without legal training, operates under qualified immunity. Judges, who act with the benefit of time, counsel, briefing, and a written record, operate under absolute immunity. The officials entrusted with the greatest power over liberty and property answer to the least.

Ending absolute judicial immunity would not expose judges to liability for honest error, and it would not convert every adverse ruling into a fresh lawsuit. It would restore the rule Congress wrote into law after the Civil War and that two Justices of the Supreme Court endorsed in 1872: a judge who acts corruptly answers for it as any other person would.

When the Star Chamber was told that a judge had helped send an innocent man to the gallows, it ordered the accusation destroyed. Four centuries later the accusation is met with a motion to dismiss. The instrument has been refined. The result has not changed.

Sources and Authorities

All sources are linked to freely accessible copies wherever one exists.

English authorities

• Floyd v. Barker, 12 Co. Rep. 23, 77 Eng. Rep. 1305 (Star Chamber 1607) — discussed, with Coke's report and the underlying facts, in Krista J. Kesselring, The Court of Star

Chamber's Record(s) and Reports: https://legalhistorymiscellany.com/2021/10/10/ records-and-reports-in-the-court-of-star-chamber/ • Case of the Marshalsea, 10 Co. Rep. 68b, 77 Eng. Rep. 1027 (1612) • Scott v. Stansfield, L.R. 3 Ex. 220 (1868) — quoted at length in Bradley v. Fisher, 80 U.S. at 349 n.11 • Fray v. Blackburn, 3 Best & Smith 576 (Q.B. 1863) — quoted in Bradley v. Fisher, 80 U.S. at 349

United States Supreme Court

• Randall v. Brigham, 74 U.S. (7 Wall.) 523 (1869): https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/ 88036/randall-v-brigham/ • Bradley v. Fisher, 80 U.S. (13 Wall.) 335 (1872): https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/ 88468/bradley-v-fisher/ • Ex parte Virginia, 100 U.S. 339 (1880): https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/90041/ex- parte-virginia/ • Tenney v. Brandhove, 341 U.S. 367 (1951): https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/ 104906/tenney-v-brandhove/ • Pierson v. Ray, 386 U.S. 547 (1967): https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/107411/ pierson-v-ray/ • O'Shea v. Littleton, 414 U.S. 488 (1974): https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/108906/ oshea-v-littleton/ • Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U.S. 409 (1976): https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109387/ imbler-v-pachtman/ • Stump v. Sparkman, 435 U.S. 349 (1978): https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109820/ stump-v-sparkman/ • Butz v. Economou, 438 U.S. 478 (1978): https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/109932/ butz-v-economou/ • Dennis v. Sparks, 449 U.S. 24 (1980): https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/110353/ dennis-v-sparks/ • Supreme Court of Virginia v. Consumers Union of the United States, Inc., 446 U.S. 719 (1980): https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/110273/supreme-court-of-virginia-v- consumers-union-of-the-united-states-inc/ • Pulliam v. Allen, 466 U.S. 522 (1984): https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111166/ pulliam-v-allen/ • Cleavinger v. Saxner, 474 U.S. 193 (1985): https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/ 111547/cleavinger-v-saxner/ • Forrester v. White, 484 U.S. 219 (1988): https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/111977/ forrester-v-white/ • Mireles v. Waco, 502 U.S. 9 (1991) (per curiam): https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/ 112655/mireles-v-waco/ • Antoine v. Byers & Anderson, Inc., 508 U.S. 429 (1993): https://www.courtlistener.com/ opinion/112876/antoine-v-byers-anderson-inc/ • United States v. Lanier, 520 U.S. 259 (1997): https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/ 118098/united-states-v-lanier/

• Van de Kamp v. Goldstein, 555 U.S. 335 (2009): https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/ 145911/van-de-kamp-v-goldstein/ • Rehberg v. Paulk, 566 U.S. 356 (2012): https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/626447/ rehberg-v-paulk/

Lower federal courts

• Gregory v. Thompson, 500 F.2d 59 (9th Cir. 1974): https://www.courtlistener.com/ opinion/320506/douglas-gregory-v-john-thompson/ • Zarcone v. Perry, 572 F.2d 52 (2d Cir. 1978): https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/ 353908/thomas-zarcone-v-william-m-perry-james-windsor-robert-j-anderson-and/ • Harris v. Harvey, 605 F.2d 330 (7th Cir. 1979): https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/ 369359/slyvester-harris-v-richard-g-harvey-jr/ • Lopez v. Vanderwater, 620 F.2d 1229 (7th Cir. 1980): https://www.courtlistener.com/ opinion/377933/flor-lopez-v-william-vanderwater/ • Rankin v. Howard, 633 F.2d 844 (9th Cir. 1980): https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/ 383704/marcus-w-rankin-v-wayne-howard/ • Harper v. Merckle, 638 F.2d 848 (5th Cir. 1981): https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/ 386061/jack-r-harper-v-arden-merckle/ • Ashelman v. Pope, 793 F.2d 1072 (9th Cir. 1986) (en banc): https:// www.courtlistener.com/opinion/471857/ashelman-v-pope/ • Morrison v. Lipscomb, 877 F.2d 463 (6th Cir. 1989): https://www.courtlistener.com/ opinion/525007/curtis-w-morrison-v-lipscomb/ • Archie v. Lanier, 95 F.3d 438 (6th Cir. 1996): https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/ 726090/vivian-ann-archie-v-david-lanier/ • Bolin v. Story, 225 F.3d 1234 (11th Cir. 2000): https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/ 770341/larry-bolin-v-richard-story/ • Stevens v. Osuna, 877 F.3d 1293 (11th Cir. 2017): https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/ 4452097/jacqueline-stevens-v-us-attorney-general/ • Wallace v. Powell, No. 3:09-cv-286, 2009 WL 4051974 (M.D. Pa. Nov. 20, 2009) (judicial immunity ruling) — case history and filings at https://clearinghouse.net/case/ 11316/ • Wallace v. Powell (M.D. Pa. Aug. 16, 2022) (damages opinion of Judge Conner): https:// www.pamd.uscourts.gov/sites/pamd/files/opinions/09v286.pdf

Statutes

• Civil Rights Act of 1866, ch. 31, § 2, 14 Stat. 27 (codified as amended at 18 U.S.C. § 242): https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/242
• Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, ch. 22, § 1, 17 Stat. 13 (codified as amended at 42 U.S.C. § 1983): https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1983
• 42 U.S.C. § 1988(b) (costs and attorney's fees, as amended in 1996): https:// www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1988
• Judicial Councils Reform and Judicial Conduct and Disability Act of 1980, Pub. L. No. 96-458, 94 Stat. 2035 (codified at 28 U.S.C. §§ 351–364)
• Federal Courts Improvement Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-317, § 309, 110 Stat. 3847, 3853: https://www.congress.gov/bill/104th-congress/house-bill/3968

Legislative history

• Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. 1680, 1758–59, 1836–37 (1866) (Johnson veto message; Sen. Trumbull; Rep. Lawrence)
• Cong. Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Sess. 365–66, 374, 385, 394, 429, app. 68, 78 (1871) (Rep. Arthur; Rep. Lowe; Rep. Lewis; Rep. Rainey; Rep. Shellabarger; Rep. Perry)
• Both volumes are searchable through the Library of Congress, A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: https://www.loc.gov/collections/century-of-lawmaking/articles-and- essays/debates-of-congress/congressional-globe/

Government data

• Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, Table S-22, Judicial Complaints, twelve months ending September 30, 2025: https://www.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/document/ jb_s22_0930.2025.pdf
• Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, Table S-22, Judicial Complaints, twelve months ending September 30, 2024: https://www.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/2025-02/ jb_s22_0930.2024.pdf
• Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, Judicial Conduct & Disability program overview and prior-year archive: https://www.uscourts.gov/administration-policies/ judicial-conduct-disability

(Judge Eleanor L. Ross)

• Judicial Council Order and Special Committee Final Report (Feb. 11, 2026): https:// www.ca11.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/judicial_complaints/ 11-25-90212%20Judicial%20Council%20Order_0.pdf
• Committee on Judicial Conduct and Disability, Order Affirming, C.C.D. No. 26-01 (May 22, 2026): https://www.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/document/c.c.d.-no.-26-01- may-22-2026.pdf
• Chief Judge Pryor, Letter to Judge Ross, Second Inquiry Under Judicial Conduct Rule 5 (June 10, 2026): https://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/judicial_complaints/ 6-10-26%20Letter%20to%20Judge%20Ross%2C%20Second%20Inquiry%20Under%20 Judicial%20Conduct%20Rule%205_0.pdf
• Chief Judge Pryor, Letter to Judge Ross Determining Not to Identify a Complaint Under Rule 5 (June 11, 2026): https://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/ judicial_complaints/ 6-11-26%20Letter%20to%20Judge%20Ross%20Determining%20Not%20to%20Identify %20a%20Complaint%20Under%20Rule%205.pdf
• H.Res. 1346, 119th Cong. (2026): https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house- resolution/1346
• H.Res. 1351, 119th Cong. (2026): https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house- resolution/1351
• Arthur D. Hellman, Chief Judge Pryor's Non-Order in the Eleanor Ross Judicial Misconduct Proceedings, The Volokh Conspiracy (June 18, 2026): https://reason.com/

volokh/2026/06/18/chief-judge-pryors-non-order-in-the-eleanor-ross-judicial- misconduct-proceedings-why-it-is-so-problematic-and-what-might-be-done-about-it/ • Federal Judicial Center, Impeachments of Federal Judges: https://www.fjc.gov/history/ judges/impeachments-federal-judges

Investigative reporting

• Michael Berens & John Shiffman, The Teflon Robe: Thousands of U.S. Judges Who Broke Laws or Oaths Remained on the Bench, Reuters (June 30, 2020)
• Michael Berens & John Shiffman, The Teflon Robe: With "Judges Judging Judges," Rogues on the Bench Have Little to Fear, Reuters (July 9, 2020)
• John Shiffman & Michael Berens, The Teflon Robe: The Long Quest to Stop a "Sugar Daddy" Judge Accused of Preying on Women, Reuters (July 14, 2020)

Scholarship

• Note, Judicial Immunity at the (Second) Founding: A New Perspective on § 1983, 136 Harv. L. Rev. 1456 (2023): https://harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/ 2023/03/136-Harv.-L.-Rev.-1456.pdf
• Jeffrey M. Shaman, Judicial Immunity from Civil and Criminal Liability, 27 San Diego L. Rev. 1 (1990): https://digital.sandiego.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi? article=1378&context=sdlr
• Margaret Z. Johns, A Black Robe Is Not a Big Tent: The Improper Expansion of Absolute Judicial Immunity to Non-Judges in Civil-Rights Cases, 59 SMU L. Rev. 265 (2006): https://scholar.smu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2191&context=smulr
• J. Randolph Block, Stump v. Sparkman and the History of Judicial Immunity, 1980 Duke L.J. 879
• Jay M. Feinman & Roy S. Cohen, Suing Judges: History and Theory, 31 S.C. L. Rev. 201 (1980)
• Peter J. Gregora, Note, Liability of Judicial Officers Under Section 1983, 79 Yale L.J. 322 (1969)
• Erwin Chemerinsky, Absolute Immunity: General Principles and Recent Developments, 24 Touro L. Rev. 473 (2008)