Cite as: 504 U. S. 158 (1992)
Opinion of the Court
instigating a legal action. Malley v. Briggs, 475 U. S. 335, 340-341 (1986) ("In 1871, the generally accepted rule was that one who procured the issuance of an arrest warrant by submitting a complaint could be held liable if the complaint was made maliciously and without probable cause").
Nonetheless, respondents argue that at common law, private defendants could defeat a malicious prosecution or abuse of process action if they acted without malice and with probable cause, and that we should therefore infer that Congress did not intend to abrogate such defenses when it enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1871. We adopted similar reasoning in Pierson v. Ray, 386 U. S., at 555-557. There, we held that police officers sued for false arrest under § 1983 were entitled to the defense that they acted with probable cause and in good faith when making an arrest under a statute they reasonably believed was valid. We recognized this defense because peace officers were accorded protection from liability at common law if they arrested an individual in good faith, even if the innocence of such person were later established. Ibid.
The rationale we adopted in Pierson is of no avail to respondents here. Even if there were sufficient common law support to conclude that respondents, like the police officers in Pierson, should be entitled to a good faith defense, that would still not entitle them to what they sought and obtained in the courts below: the qualified immunity from suit accorded government officials under Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U. S. 800 (1982).
In Harlow, we altered the standard of qualified immunity
adopted in our prior § 1983 cases because we recognized that "[t]he subjective element of the good-faith defense frequently [had] prove[d] incompatible with our admonition . . . that insubstantial claims should not proceed to trial." Id., at 815-816. Because of the attendant harms to government effectiveness caused by lengthy judicial inquiry into subjective motivation, we concluded that "bare allegations of malice
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