Proximate Cause and Section 1983 It is generally agreed that federal common law principles of proximate cause govern section 1983 as a matter of statutory interpretation because they are part of the “background of tort liability.” The Supreme Court weighed in on these principles in its 2017 decision in County of Los Angeles v. Mendez, […]…

Christopher v. Harbury, Cover-Ups and Right of Access Claims In Christopher v. Harbury, 122 S. Ct. 2179 (U.S. 2002), the Supreme Court dealt with a denial of access claim brought by the plaintiff widow against federal government officials, alleging that they intentionally deceived her in concealing information about her husband’s detention and torture in Guatemala […]…

Almost everyone knows by now that in a still-controversial decision, DeShaney v. County of Winnebago, 489 U.S. 189 (1989), the Supreme Court ruled that the due process clause does not create an affirmative substantive due process duty on the part of government to protect citizens from private harm. The Court in DeShaney suggested two exceptions […]…

My talented singer-songwriter son, Daniel Nahmod, recently interviewed me and posted the interview on his website. The interview appears with a separate election-eve patriotic program that you may also want to check out. In the interview, my son asks me about section 1983, the Fourteenth Amendment and my successful argument in the Supreme Court in […]…

I posted the following very highly critical comments on Bush v. Gore some years ago. In view of President Trump’s apparent determination to retain the presidency through the Supreme Court, I thought you might be interested in reading this post in case you missed it the first time. ——————————————————————————————————————– It is one of the worst […]…

The en banc Eighth Circuit was sharply divided about the existence of a Fourth Amendment seizure in a case where, among other things, a person fled after an officer in a police car stopped directly in front of him and his friend, one Michael Brown (yes, that Michael Brown, who was subsequently shot and killed […]…

Some weeks ago, three of us, Professor Steve Schwinn of UIC John Marshall Law School, Chicago-area experienced litigator John Murphey and I talked about qualified immunity at a Zoom program sponsored by the UIC John Marshall American Constitution Society student group. It was a very good discussion, in my view, covering the basics of qualified […]…