Cite as: 509 U. S. 443 (1993)
Scalia, J., concurring in judgment
ity relies upon, see ante, at 453-454. It is particularly diffi-cult to imagine that "due process" contains the substantive right not to be subjected to excessive punitive damages, since if it contains that it would surely also contain the substantive right not to be subjected to excessive fines, which would make the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment superfluous in light of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
To say (as I do) that "procedural due process" requires judicial review of punitive damages awards for reasonableness is not to say that there is a federal constitutional right to a substantively correct "reasonableness" determination— which is, in my view, what the plurality tries to assure today. Procedural due process also requires, I am certain, judicial review of the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain a civil jury verdict, and judicial review of the reasonableness of jury-awarded compensatory damages (including damages for pain and suffering); but no one would claim (or at least no one has yet claimed) that a substantively correct determination of sufficiency of evidence and reasonableness of compensatory damages is a federal constitutional right. So too, I think, with punitive damages: Judicial assessment of their reasonableness is a federal right, but a correct assessment of their reasonableness is not.
Today's reprise of Haslip, despite the widely divergent opinions it has produced, has not been a waste. The procedures approved here, ante, at 463-466 (plurality opinion), are far less detailed and restrictive than those upheld in Haslip, supra, at 19-23, suggesting that if the Court ever does invent new procedural requirements, they will not deviate significantly from the traditional ones that ought to govern. And the disposition of the "substantive due process" claim demonstrates that the Court's " 'constitutional sensibilities' " are far more resistant to " 'jar[ring],' " ante, at 462 (plurality opinion) (quoting Haslip, supra, at 18), than one might have imagined after Haslip. There the Court said a 4-to-1 ratio
471
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