Every entry below is a holding, a direct quotation, or a stated conclusion taken from a published judicial opinion. Each is cited to the case and, where available, to the page. Most are decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States. All of them are law — binding precedent that lower courts follow and that governs what happens to an ordinary person who walks into a courtroom.
Read together, they describe one consistent rule: a judge is not answerable in damages for anything done in a judicial capacity. Not for error. Not for malice. Not for corruption. Not for acting in excess of authority. Not for conspiring with a prosecutor to predetermine the outcome of a case. Not, in one decision, for taking a bribe. The courts have said this in their own published words, and they have said it repeatedly for more than 150 years.
The exceptions confirm the shape of the rule rather than limiting it. A judge becomes reachable when he fires a court employee, uses physical force, or jails someone when no case is pending — that is, when he stops acting like a judge. For everything done from the bench, the protection is absolute.
This page states what the courts have decided. It draws no conclusion for the reader. It does, however, ask the reader to consider a few questions.
Are the people being protected? The stated justification for immunity, repeated by the Supreme Court, is that it exists “for the benefit of the public.” Read the hundred entries below and decide whether the public has received the benefit.
Whose courts are these? Every rule in the system was written by lawyers. Every judge who interprets those rules is a lawyer. Every doctrine on this page was created by judges, expanded by judges, and applied by judges to protect judges. At no point in that development did the people harmed by judicial misconduct hold any voice in defining the scope of the protection. Decide whether that describes courts built for the people, or courts built for attorneys, by attorneys, run by attorneys in black robes.
What is a rule worth if the official applying it can simply decline to follow it? When a judge disregards the statute, the rule of procedure, the binding precedent, or the constitutional right, the decisions on this page establish that there is nothing the injured person can do about it directly. No damages. Since 1996, in most circumstances, no injunction. What remains is appeal — more time, more money, more years of a person’s life spent inside the same system, arguing to other judges, under standards of review built to affirm. Many such cases run for years. Some run for decades. The entire cost is borne by the person who was injured, and the injury continues while it is borne.
And what does a consequence-free environment teach? A judge who observes across a career of twenty, thirty, or forty years that error, rule violation, and deliberate abuse produce no personal repercussion has been taught something, and has learned it. Until judges are held accountable, there is no incentive — none — for any judge to do what the law already requires of them.
Decide for yourself whether this is a justice system or a system of control, and whether it is one you wish to support or participate in.
Then read the cases.
One hundred entries, numbered below and grouped by subject. Every quotation is transcribed from the court’s published opinion and pin-cited where a pin cite is available. Each entry names the article on this site from which it is drawn. Several decisions have been limited by later law or statute; where that is so, the entry says so. Verify the current status of any case before relying on it in a filing. The same one hundred entries rotate through the On the Record bar on the home page.
“[Judges 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 … This doctrine is as old as the law, and its maintenance is essential to the impartial administration of justice.”
Randall v. Brigham, 74 U.S. (7 Wall.) 523, 536 (1868)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The No-Accountability Cases
“[J]udges 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.”
Bradley v. Fisher, 80 U.S. (13 Wall.) 335, 351 (1872)
Drawn from: Above the Law: How “Judicial Immunity” Lets Judges Escape Accountability
The Court drew the only line it would ever draw: “A distinction must be here observed between excess of jurisdiction and the clear absence of all jurisdiction over the subject-matter.” In practice, that line almost never saves anyone.
Bradley v. Fisher, 80 U.S. (13 Wall.) 335, 351–52 (1872)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The No-Accountability Cases
The stated reason: a judicial officer “shall be free to act upon his own convictions, without apprehension of personal consequences to himself.”
Bradley v. Fisher, 80 U.S. (13 Wall.) 335, 347 (1872)
Drawn from: Why Judicial Immunity Must Be Abolished
Your remedy, according to the Court: “If … they act with partiality, or maliciously, or corruptly, or arbitrarily, or oppressively, they may be called to an account by impeachment” — a political process no ordinary citizen can start.
Bradley v. Fisher, 80 U.S. (13 Wall.) 335, 350 (1872)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The No-Accountability Cases
The dissent, in 1872: “[W]here it is alleged not only that his proceeding was in excess of jurisdiction, but that he acted maliciously and corruptly[,] … he is, in my opinion, subject to suit the same as a private person would be under like circumstances.”
Bradley v. Fisher, 80 U.S. (13 Wall.) 335, 357 (1872) (Davis, J., dissenting)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The No-Accountability Cases
The master premise for the whole line: Congress could not have meant to disturb immunities “well grounded in history and reason by covert inclusion in the general language before us.”
Tenney v. Brandhove, 341 U.S. 367, 376 (1951)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The No-Accountability Cases
“The claim of an unworthy purpose does not destroy the privilege.”
Tenney v. Brandhove, 341 U.S. 367, 377 (1951)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The No-Accountability Cases
Congress passed a civil rights statute in 1871 to hold officials accountable. The Court held it changed nothing for judges: immunity applies “even when the judge is accused of acting maliciously and corruptly.”
Pierson v. Ray, 386 U.S. 547, 554 (1967)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The No-Accountability Cases
Immunity, the Court explained, “is 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.”
Pierson v. Ray, 386 U.S. 547, 554 (1967)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The No-Accountability Cases
Justice Douglas, in dissent: “I do not think that all judges, under all circumstances, no matter how outrageous their conduct[,] are immune from suit under [§ 1983].”
Pierson v. Ray, 386 U.S. 547, 559 (1967) (Douglas, J., dissenting)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The No-Accountability Cases
The Supreme Court has ruled that a judge cannot be sued for a judicial act — even one done with malice or in bad faith.
Stump v. Sparkman, 435 U.S. 349 (1978)
Drawn from: Above the Law: How “Judicial Immunity” Lets Judges Escape Accountability
“A judge will not be deprived of immunity because the action he took was in error, was done maliciously, or was in excess of his authority.”
Stump v. Sparkman, 435 U.S. 349, 356–57 (1978)
Drawn from: Above the Law: How “Judicial Immunity” Lets Judges Escape Accountability
A judge secretly authorized the sterilization of a 15-year-old girl — no hearing, no notice to her, no lawyer appointed for her, no docket entry. She was told she was having her appendix removed. She learned the truth years later, when she could not conceive. The Court held the judge absolutely immune.
Stump v. Sparkman, 435 U.S. 349 (1978)
Drawn from: Above the Law: How “Judicial Immunity” Lets Judges Escape Accountability
The test the Court applied: whether the act is “a function normally performed by a judge,” and whether the parties “dealt with the judge in his judicial capacity.” Signing the sterilization order passed.
Stump v. Sparkman, 435 U.S. 349, 362 (1978)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The No-Accountability Cases
“[W]hat 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.”
Stump v. Sparkman, 435 U.S. 349, 367 (1978) (Stewart, J., dissenting)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The No-Accountability Cases
Justice Stewart warned that the majority left a judge free, “like a loose cannon, to inflict indiscriminate damage whenever he announces that he is acting in his judicial capacity.”
Stump v. Sparkman, 435 U.S. 349, 367 (1978) (Stewart, J., dissenting)
Drawn from: Why Judicial Immunity Must Be Abolished
A judge allegedly ordered police officers to seize a public defender and drag him into the courtroom “with excessive force.” The Supreme Court summarily held the judge absolutely immune.
Mireles v. Waco, 502 U.S. 9 (1991)
Drawn from: Above the Law: How “Judicial Immunity” Lets Judges Escape Accountability
Judicial immunity “is not overcome by allegations of bad faith or malice.”
Mireles v. Waco, 502 U.S. 9, 11 (1991) (per curiam)
Drawn from: Why Judicial Immunity Must Be Abolished
“If judicial immunity means anything, it means that a judge ‘will not be deprived of immunity because the action he took was in error … or was in excess of his authority.’”
Mireles v. Waco, 502 U.S. 9, 12–13 (1991) (per curiam)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The No-Accountability Cases
An act does not become nonjudicial “by virtue of an allegation of malice or corruption of motive.”
Mireles v. Waco, 502 U.S. 9, 13 (1991)
Drawn from: Why Judicial Immunity Must Be Abolished
Justice Stevens, in dissent: “Ordering a battery has no relation to a function normally performed by a judge.”
Mireles v. Waco, 502 U.S. 9, 16 (1991) (Stevens, J., dissenting)
Drawn from: Above the Law: How “Judicial Immunity” Lets Judges Escape Accountability
A judge was accused of issuing a ruling because he was bribed. The Supreme Court held him immune anyway — “whether or not the injunction had issued as the result of a corrupt conspiracy.”
Dennis v. Sparks, 449 U.S. 24, 26–27 (1980)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The No-Accountability Cases
The people who bribed the judge could be sued. The judge who took the bribe could not.
Dennis v. Sparks, 449 U.S. 24, 27–28 (1980)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The No-Accountability Cases
“[A] conspiracy between judge and prosecutor to predetermine the outcome of a judicial proceeding, while clearly improper, nevertheless does not pierce the immunity extended to judges and prosecutors.”
Ashelman v. Pope, 793 F.2d 1072, 1078 (9th Cir. 1986) (en banc)
Drawn from: Above the Law: How “Judicial Immunity” Lets Judges Escape Accountability
“[A]llegations that a conspiracy produced a certain decision should no more pierce the actor’s immunity than allegations of bad faith, personal interest or outright malevolence.”
Ashelman v. Pope, 793 F.2d 1072, 1078 (9th Cir. 1986) (en banc)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The No-Accountability Cases
A judge who never had personal jurisdiction over you is still immune: “[A] judge who possesses subject matter jurisdiction is not within the ‘clear absence of all jurisdiction’ posture which would deprive him of the use of the defense of judicial immunity.”
Dykes v. Hosemann, 776 F.2d 942, 950 (11th Cir. 1985) (en banc)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The No-Accountability Cases
“[J]udges presiding over courts of general jurisdiction are absolutely immune from suits for damages even if they act erroneously, corruptly or in excess of jurisdiction.”
King v. Love, 766 F.2d 962, 965 (6th Cir. 1985)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The No-Accountability Cases
A judge set an allegedly excessive bond and misled the defendant about it. Immune — because setting bond is a judicial act.
King v. Love, 766 F.2d 962, 968 (6th Cir. 1985)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The No-Accountability Cases
Jurisdiction “must be construed broadly where the issue is the immunity of the judge.” The one escape hatch is read in the judge’s favor by design.
Stump v. Sparkman, 435 U.S. 349, 356 (1978)
Drawn from: Why Judicial Immunity Must Be Abolished
“[A] prosecutor enjoys absolute immunity from § 1983 suits for damages when he acts within the scope of his prosecutorial duties” — covering even the knowing use of perjured testimony.
Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U.S. 409, 420 (1976)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The No-Accountability Cases
The Court said the quiet part out loud: “this immunity does leave the genuinely wronged defendant without civil redress against a prosecutor whose malicious or dishonest action deprives him of liberty.”
Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U.S. 409, 427 (1976)
Drawn from: Above the Law: How “Judicial Immunity” Lets Judges Escape Accountability
Absolute immunity was extended to federal agency adjudicators: “Those who complain of error in such proceedings must seek agency or judicial review.”
Butz v. Economou, 438 U.S. 478, 514 (1978)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The No-Accountability Cases
“Judges have absolute immunity not because of their particular location within the Government but because of the special nature of their responsibilities.”
Butz v. Economou, 438 U.S. 478, 511 (1978)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The No-Accountability Cases
A state supreme court and its chief justice were held absolutely immune for the rules they wrote governing the lawyers who appear before them.
Supreme Court of Virginia v. Consumers Union, 446 U.S. 719, 734 (1980)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The No-Accountability Cases
Supervisory prosecutors who failed to track evidence of innocence — a failure that helped produce a wrongful conviction — were held absolutely immune. “We conclude that a prosecutor’s absolute immunity extends to all these claims.”
Van de Kamp v. Goldstein, 555 U.S. 335, 337 (2009)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The No-Accountability Cases
“[P]rosecutors involved in such supervision or training or information-system management enjoy absolute immunity from the kind of legal claims at issue here.”
Van de Kamp v. Goldstein, 555 U.S. 335, 349 (2009)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The No-Accountability Cases
“[A] grand jury witness has absolute immunity from any § 1983 claim based on the witness’ testimony.”
Rehberg v. Paulk, 566 U.S. 356, 369 (2012)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The No-Accountability Cases
And the rule “may not be circumvented by claiming that a grand jury witness conspired to present false testimony.”
Rehberg v. Paulk, 566 U.S. 356, 369 (2012)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The No-Accountability Cases
“We conclude that judicial immunity is not a bar to prospective injunctive relief against a judicial officer acting in her judicial capacity.” Congress overrode this holding twelve years later.
Pulliam v. Allen, 466 U.S. 522, 541–42 (1984)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The Accountability Cases
When one narrow crack of accountability opened, Congress closed it: after 1996, “injunctive relief shall not be granted” against “a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer’s judicial capacity.”
Bolin v. Story, 225 F.3d 1234, 1242 (11th Cir. 2000)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The No-Accountability Cases
Congress amended § 1983 in 1996 — at the urging of the judiciary — to provide that injunctive relief against a judge “shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable.” Every inch of exposure that ever opened has been closed by the protected class or at its request.
Federal Courts Improvement Act of 1996, limiting Pulliam v. Allen, 466 U.S. 522 (1984)
Drawn from: Why Judicial Immunity Must Be Abolished
Where the line has been drawn: a judge who excluded Black citizens from jury service could be prosecuted, because jury selection is “merely a ministerial act, as much so as the act of a sheriff holding an execution.”
Ex parte Virginia, 100 U.S. 339, 348 (1880)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The Accountability Cases
What it takes to reach a judge: “To forcibly evict someone from a courtroom by the use of physical force is simply not an act of a judicial nature.”
Gregory v. Thompson, 500 F.2d 59, 64 (9th Cir. 1974)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The Accountability Cases
A judge was held personally liable for a racially motivated campaign to discredit and remove a Black police lieutenant — because “immunity does not apply because Judge Harvey was not performing judicial functions.”
Harris v. Harvey, 605 F.2d 330, 337 (7th Cir. 1979)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The Accountability Cases
A judge who stepped out of his robe to act as prosecutor stayed immune for “arraigning, convicting, and sentencing” the man he had charged.
Lopez v. Vanderwater, 620 F.2d 1229, 1234 (7th Cir. 1980)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The Accountability Cases
He lost immunity only for the prosecuting: “Because Vanderwater is not immune from liability for his prosecutorial acts … we reverse the summary judgment in his favor.”
Lopez v. Vanderwater, 620 F.2d 1229, 1236 (7th Cir. 1980)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The Accountability Cases
A rule that a conspiracy allegation could strip a judge of immunity survived six years before the Ninth Circuit overruled it en banc.
Rankin v. Howard, 633 F.2d 844, 847 (9th Cir. 1980), overruled in relevant part by Ashelman v. Pope, 793 F.2d 1072 (9th Cir. 1986)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The Accountability Cases
A judge had a man seized and jailed for “contempt” during a personal dispute, with no case pending. Only then did immunity fail: “These nonjudicial acts, to state the obvious, are not cloaked with judicial immunity from suit under § 1983.”
Harper v. Merckle, 638 F.2d 848, 858–59 (5th Cir. 1981)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The Accountability Cases
“We find, accordingly, that Judge Merckle should not be accorded absolute judicial immunity because his acts were not ‘judicial acts.’”
Harper v. Merckle, 638 F.2d 848, 859 (5th Cir. 1981)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The Accountability Cases
“The Supreme Court has recently decided that the doctrine of judicial immunity does not protect state judicial officers … from suits for injunctive relief.” That window has since been closed by statute.
Sevier v. Turner, 742 F.2d 262, 270 (6th Cir. 1984)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The Accountability Cases
“Absolute immunity flows not from rank or title or ‘location within the Government,’ but from the nature of the responsibilities of the individual official.”
Cleavinger v. Saxner, 474 U.S. 193, 201 (1985)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The Accountability Cases
Immunity follows the act, not the office: the cases “suggest an intelligible distinction between judicial acts and the administrative, legislative, or executive functions that judges may on occasion be assigned by law to perform.”
Forrester v. White, 484 U.S. 219, 227 (1988)
Drawn from: Why Judicial Immunity Must Be Abolished
A judge could be sued for firing a probation officer — “we think it clear that Judge White was acting in an administrative capacity when he demoted and discharged Forrester.” Fire an employee and you can be sued. Destroy a litigant from the bench and you cannot.
Forrester v. White, 484 U.S. 219, 229 (1988)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The Accountability Cases
It is “the nature of the function performed, not the identity of the actor who performed it,” that decides.
Forrester v. White, 484 U.S. 219, 229 (1988)
Drawn from: The Arbitrary Nature of Judicial Authority
Court reporters can be sued. Judges cannot. “[C]ourt reporters do not exercise the kind of judgment that is protected by the doctrine of judicial immunity.”
Antoine v. Byers & Anderson, Inc., 508 U.S. 429, 437 (1993)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The Accountability Cases
A sitting state judge was criminally prosecuted for sexually assaulting women in his chambers. Judicial immunity is a civil-damages doctrine — it is no shield against the criminal law.
United States v. Lanier, 520 U.S. 259 (1997)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The Accountability Cases
The statute under which he was charged makes it criminal to act “‘willfully’ and … under color of law … to deprive a person of rights protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.” It is almost never used against judges.
United States v. Lanier, 520 U.S. 259, 264 (1997)
Drawn from: Judicial Immunity — Case-Law Research Report: The Accountability Cases
“No man can be a judge in his own case and no man is permitted to try cases where he has an interest in the outcome.” The rule the courts enforce against everyone but themselves.
In re Murchison, 349 U.S. 133, 136 (1955)
Drawn from: The Troubling Power of Contempt
The law endeavors to prevent “even the probability of unfairness.” Asking judges whether judges should be accountable is an inquiry whose answer was never in doubt.
In re Murchison, 349 U.S. 133, 136 (1955)
Drawn from: Why Judicial Immunity Must Be Abolished
Due process is denied where “the probability of actual bias on the part of the judge or decisionmaker is too high to be constitutionally tolerable” — yet the doctrine polices only the spectacular conflicts, never the everyday ones.
Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., 556 U.S. 868, 872 (2009)
Drawn from: The Justice Paradox
“[J]ustice must satisfy the appearance of justice.”
Offutt v. United States, 348 U.S. 11, 14 (1954)
Drawn from: Predetermined Verdicts
The Supreme Court on the contempt power: “[M]en who make their way to the bench sometimes exhibit vanity, irascibility, narrowness, arrogance, and other weaknesses to which human flesh is heir.”
Bloom v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 194, 202 & n.4 (1968) (quoting Sacher v. United States, 343 U.S. 1, 12 (1952))
Drawn from: The Troubling Power of Contempt
The Court has described summary contempt as an “arbitrary” power that is “liable to abuse.” It is still used every day.
Bloom v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 194, 202 & n.4 (1968) (quoting Ex parte Terry, 128 U.S. 289, 313 (1888))
Drawn from: The Troubling Power of Contempt
Criminal contempt is “a crime in every fundamental respect” — and serious contempts carry the constitutional right to trial by jury.
Bloom v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 194, 201–02, 210–11 (1968)
Drawn from: The Troubling Power of Contempt
“[I]n contempt cases an even more compelling argument can be made for providing a right to jury trial as a protection against the arbitrary exercise of official power” — because contemptuous conduct “often strikes at the most vulnerable and human qualities of a judge’s temperament.”
Bloom v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 194, 202 (1968)
Drawn from: The Troubling Power of Contempt
“[A] defendant in criminal contempt proceedings should be given a public trial before a judge other than the one reviled by the contemnor.”
Mayberry v. Pennsylvania, 400 U.S. 455, 466 (1971)
Drawn from: The Troubling Power of Contempt
The judge who feels disrespected defines the offense, finds that it occurred, selects the punishment — and is absolutely immune for the entire sequence.
Mireles v. Waco, 502 U.S. 9 (1991)
Drawn from: The Troubling Power of Contempt
The law on the books: pro se pleadings are to be held “to less stringent standards than formal pleadings drafted by lawyers.” The law in operation delivers the reverse.
Haines v. Kerner, 404 U.S. 519, 520–21 (1972)
Drawn from: The Two-Tiered Court System
A document filed pro se “is to be liberally construed.” Trial courts across the country invert this command daily.
Erickson v. Pardus, 551 U.S. 89, 94 (2007)
Drawn from: A Rigged System
The Court stated the premise with unusual candor: “Our rules of procedure are based on the assumption that litigation is normally conducted by lawyers.”
McNeil v. United States, 508 U.S. 106, 113 (1993)
Drawn from: The Great Legal Lie
And it refused to soften them: the Court has “never suggested that procedural rules in ordinary civil litigation should be interpreted so as to excuse mistakes by those who proceed without counsel.”
McNeil v. United States, 508 U.S. 106, 113 (1993)
Drawn from: The Great Legal Lie
“There can be no equal justice where the kind of trial a man gets depends on the amount of money he has.” Seven decades later, that describes the ordinary operation of American civil justice.
Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U.S. 12, 19 (1956) (Black, J.)
Drawn from: A Rigged System
“The right to defend is given directly to the accused; for it is he who suffers the consequences if the defense fails.” A right whose exercise is systematically punished is a right revoked in practice.
Faretta v. California, 422 U.S. 806, 819–20 (1975)
Drawn from: A Rigged System
An attorney’s hours are worth hundreds of dollars each. A self-represented litigant doing identical work is worth nothing — even when she wins.
Kay v. Ehrler, 499 U.S. 432 (1991)
Drawn from: The Case for Compensating Pro Se Litigants
Fundamental fairness may require courts to deploy affirmative procedural safeguards when a litigant appears without counsel. The architecture of protection exists on paper.
Turner v. Rogers, 564 U.S. 431 (2011)
Drawn from: The Hidden Barriers
“The right to sue and defend in the courts is the alternative of force. In an organized society it is the right conservative of all other rights, and lies at the foundation of orderly government.”
Chambers v. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Co., 207 U.S. 142, 148 (1907)
Drawn from: The Mirage of Justice
“[W]herever one is assailed in his person or his property, there he may defend.”
Windsor v. McVeigh, 93 U.S. 274, 277 (1876)
Drawn from: The Constitutional Infirmity of Court Appearance Fees
Due process requires “at a minimum, that … persons forced to settle their claims of right and duty through the judicial process must be given a meaningful opportunity to be heard.”
Boddie v. Connecticut, 401 U.S. 371, 377 (1971)
Drawn from: The Constitutional Infirmity of Court Appearance Fees
Prisoners are constitutionally entitled to “adequate law libraries or adequate assistance from persons trained in the law.” Ordinary civil litigants are entitled to neither.
Bounds v. Smith, 430 U.S. 817, 828 (1977)
Drawn from: Equal Access to Information
The Court then confined that right, holding there is no “abstract, freestanding right to a law library” and that a litigant must show actual hindrance to a nonfrivolous claim.
Lewis v. Casey, 518 U.S. 343, 351 (1996)
Drawn from: Equal Access to Information
“[T]he nature of an occupation, standing alone, does not provide sanctuary from the Sherman Act.” The Court struck down a bar association’s minimum-fee schedule as price fixing.
Goldfarb v. Virginia State Bar, 421 U.S. 773, 787 (1975)
Drawn from: Monopolistic Gatekeeping
A bar’s status as a state agency for some purposes “does not create an antitrust shield that allows it to foster anticompetitive practices for the benefit of its members.”
Goldfarb v. Virginia State Bar, 421 U.S. 773, 791 (1975)
Drawn from: Monopolistic Gatekeeping
“[P]rohibitions against anticompetitive self-regulation by active market participants are an axiom of federal antitrust policy.” The legal profession is the paradigm case.
North Carolina State Board of Dental Examiners v. FTC, 574 U.S. 494, 505 (2015)
Drawn from: The True Purpose of Unauthorized Practice of Law Regulations
Non-lawyers have represented inventors before the Patent Office for generations, protected from state unauthorized-practice enforcement. The system did not descend into incompetence.
Sperry v. Florida ex rel. Florida Bar, 373 U.S. 379 (1963)
Drawn from: The True Purpose of Unauthorized Practice of Law Regulations
The Court struck down a prison rule barring inmates from helping one another with habeas petitions, holding that state power over the practice of law “cannot be exercised so as to abrogate federally protected rights.”
Johnson v. Avery, 393 U.S. 483, 490 n.11 (1969)
Drawn from: The Unauthorized Practice of Law: A Barrier to Justice and Freedom
Justice Douglas described the profession’s “closed-shop philosophy” as “utterly out of place in the modern world,” where the volume of claims far exceeds the capacity of licensed practitioners.
Johnson v. Avery, 393 U.S. 483 (1969) (Douglas, J., concurring)
Drawn from: The Unauthorized Practice of Law: A Barrier to Justice and Freedom
Rules “framed to protect the public” can “in their actual operation significantly impair the value of associational freedoms.”
United Mine Workers of America, District 12 v. Illinois State Bar Ass’n, 389 U.S. 217, 222 (1967)
Drawn from: A Rigged System
“Collective activity undertaken to obtain meaningful access to the courts is a fundamental right within the protection of the First Amendment.”
United Transportation Union v. State Bar of Michigan, 401 U.S. 576, 585 (1971)
Drawn from: A Rigged System
In 1794 the first Chief Justice of the United States charged a jury sitting in the Supreme Court itself: “you have nevertheless a right to take upon yourselves to judge of both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy.”
Georgia v. Brailsford, 3 U.S. (3 Dall.) 1, 4 (1794) (Jay, C.J.)
Drawn from: Why Juries Must Determine What Is Just
A century later the Court reversed course: “We must hold firmly to the doctrine that in the courts of the United States it is the duty of juries in criminal cases to take the law from the court.”
Sparf v. United States, 156 U.S. 51, 102 (1895)
Drawn from: Why Juries Must Determine What Is Just
Justice Gray, dissenting, found that “[u]ntil nearly forty years after the adoption of the Constitution … not a single decision” had denied the criminal jury’s right to decide the law as well as the facts.
Sparf v. United States, 156 U.S. 51, 168 (1895) (Gray, J., dissenting)
Drawn from: Why Juries Must Determine What Is Just
John Adams, on whether a juror must surrender his judgment to the court: “It is not only his right, but his duty … to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court.”
Quoted in Sparf v. United States, 156 U.S. 51, 144 (1895) (Gray, J., dissenting)
Drawn from: Why Juries Must Determine What Is Just
Justice Holmes acknowledged it flatly: “the jury has the power to bring in a verdict in the teeth of both law and facts.” Jurors are never told.
Horning v. District of Columbia, 254 U.S. 135, 138 (1920)
Drawn from: Why Juries Must Determine What Is Just
“If the jury feels that the law under which the defendant is accused is unjust … the jury has the power to acquit, and the courts must abide by that decision.”
United States v. Moylan, 417 F.2d 1002, 1006 (4th Cir. 1969)
Drawn from: Why Juries Must Determine What Is Just
“[T]he pages of history shine on instances of the jury’s exercise of its prerogative to disregard uncontradicted evidence and instructions of the judge.” The court celebrated the power and then refused to tell jurors it exists.
United States v. Dougherty, 473 F.2d 1113, 1130 (D.C. Cir. 1972)
Drawn from: Why Juries Must Determine What Is Just
A trial judge may never direct a verdict of guilty “regardless of how overwhelmingly the evidence may point in that direction,” and is “barred from attempting to override or interfere with the jurors’ independent judgment.”
United States v. Martin Linen Supply Co., 430 U.S. 564, 572–73 (1977)
Drawn from: Why Juries Must Determine What Is Just
The jury was preserved to give the accused “an inestimable safeguard against the corrupt or overzealous prosecutor and against the compliant, biased, or eccentric judge.”
Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145, 156 (1968)
Drawn from: Why Juries Must Determine What Is Just
Its purpose “is to guard against the exercise of arbitrary power — to make available the commonsense judgment of the community … in preference to the professional or perhaps over-conditioned or biased response of a judge.”
Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522, 530 (1975)
Drawn from: Why Juries Must Determine What Is Just
The guarantee rests on the jury’s historic function “to guard against a spirit of oppression and tyranny on the part of rulers” and its standing as “the great bulwark of [our] civil and political liberties.”
Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 477 (2000)
Drawn from: Why Juries Must Determine What Is Just
These one hundred entries are drawn from the essays and case-law research reports published on this site. The full opinions for the judicial-immunity cases, together with research summaries for each, are available in the Judicial Immunity case library.
