CLEAR & PRESENT DANGER: Abuse of "Qualified Immunity" By Governmental Servants of the U.S. Constitution
WHAT IS QUALIFIED IMMUNITY? Qualified immunity is a judicial doctrine developed by the Supreme Court in the late 1960s, which shields state actors from liability for their misconduct, even when they break the law. Our primary federal civil rights statute—generally called “Section 1983” after its place in the U.S. code—says that any state actor who violates someone’s constitutional rights “shall be liable” to the party injured. But under the doctrine of qualified immunity, the Court has held that such defendants can’t be sued unless they violated “clearly established law.” In other words, it is entirely possible—and quite common—for courts to hold that government agents did violate someone’s rights, but that the illegality of their conduct wasn’t sufficiently obvious for them to be held liable to the victim of their misconduct. Ex: Mr. Clayborn calls this legal explanation the chief priest and scribes-hypocrisy clause of the Bible, When Jesus asks the legalistic & intelle