2024 Term of Court:
The United States Constitution provides that “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” U.S. Const., Amendment VIII; see also U.S. Const., Amendment XIV, §1. The Constitution doesn’t say what happens when that provision, or any other provision of the Bill of Rights, is violated by federal authorities. In Goldey v. Fields, US Sup.Ct.Slip Opinion of June 30, 2025, an inmate in a federal prison had sued the guards at his prison for damages he allegedly incurred as a result of his guards’ alleged violations of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishments” (in the form of frequent, and allegedly unjustified uses of physical force against him). The Court dismissed the prisoner’s lawsuit, without a trial, on the grounds that his claims for damages for the alleged violation of Eighth Amendment rights had never been recognized as a lawsuit that could be brought under the federal Constitution. The Court distinguished its ruling in the 1971 case of Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), where the Court did recognize and allow a lawsuit for damages against federal agents who had allegedly violated a plaintiff’s rights under the Fourth Amendment. The vote on the Court, in the Goldey Case, was unanimous.
Comment: Before the Constitution was written, English and American courts customarily recognized and created new remedies for violations of newly recognized laws. What the federal Constitution added to that mix was a provision limiting federal courts to the exercise of “judicial power,” as opposed to “legislative power.” See and compare U.S. Const., Article III, §1, with Article I, §1. From our perspective of reading those provisions of the Constitution 230 years after they were written and ratified, it is impossible to tell whether the writers and ratifiers intended to include the recognition of new remedies for the violation of new laws within the meaning of the words “judicial power.” The Bivens Case Justices, for the most part, thought they did, while the Goldey Case Justices thought they did not. That kind of ambiguity in the Constitution can be legitimately resolved only by courts making the best estimate of the purpose and policy of the ambiguous words in the light of their readily apparent textual and historical contexts. My guess in this case, based on the Constitution’s writers’ and ratifiers’ preeminent favoritism toward the exercise of a broad range of “legislative” powers by elected legislatures, would be with the Justices deciding the Goldey Case. However, if that is the position the Court itself eventually adopts, as the current majority of Justices expressly favors, the Bivens Case should be overruled outright.
Dan D. Rhea
RECENT RULINGS 