High-speed police pursuit cases often end in serious bodily harm or death not only to the person pursued but to innocent bystanders as well. In most such cases the Fourth Amendment’s excessive force/reasonableness standard does not apply because there is…

The Contracts Clause The Contracts Clause, U.S. Const. Art I, § 10, provides: “No State shall … pass any … Law Impairing the Obligation of Contracts.” The Supreme Court has developed a three-part Contracts Clause test: (1) does the state law…

By its terms, section 1983 creates damages and prospective relief remedies for deprivations by state and local government officials, and by local governments themselves, of rights, privileges and immunities secured by the Constitution and laws. But what constitutional violations are…

The Decalogue Society of Chicago invited Professors Nicole Garnett of Notre Dame Law School, Michael Helfand of Pepperdine Law School and me to speak about government funding and church-state separation in light of the Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision in…

Police officers when on the job and exercising government power are state actors subject to the Fourteenth Amendment and incorporated constitutional provisions, including the Fourth Amendment. (I discuss extensively the various state action tests and Supreme Court and circuit decisions…

After I posted earlier, I realized that I had inadvertently omitted two per curiam excessive force decisions from the 2021 Term in which the Supreme Court ruled in favor of granting qualified immunity to law enforcement officers. So below is…

Some of you may be interested in a short list of recent Supreme Court section 1983-related decisions. Here are decisions from the Court’s 2021 Term, together with the current two cert-granted cases for the 2022 Term. I hope you find…