472
O'Connor, J., dissenting
between punitive damages and actual damages "may be close to the line" of "constitutional impropriety," Haslip, supra, at 23-24; today we decide that a 10-to-1 ratio between punitive damages and the potential harm of petitioner's conduct passes muster—calculating that potential harm, very generously, to be more than 50 times the $19,000 in actual damages that respondents suffered, see ante, at 460-462 (plurality opinion).
The plurality's decision is valuable, then, in that the great majority of due process challenges to punitive damages awards can henceforth be disposed of simply with the observation that "this is no worse than TXO." I would go further, to shut the door the plurality leaves slightly ajar. As I said in Haslip, the Constitution gives federal courts no business in this area, except to assure that due process (i. e., traditional procedure) has been observed. 499 U. S., at 27-28 (opinion concurring in judgment). State legislatures and courts have ample authority to eliminate any perceived "unfairness" in the common-law punitive damages regime, and have frequently exercised that authority in recent years. See id., at 39; Brief for Attorney General of Alabama et al. as Amici Curiae 14-17 (collecting state statutes and cases); Brief for National Association of Securities and Commercial Law Attorneys as Amicus Curiae 16-30 (same). The plurality's continued assertion that federal judges have some, almost-never-usable, power to impose a standard of "reasonable punitive damages" through the clumsy medium of the Due Process Clause serves only to spawn wasteful litigation, and to reduce the incentives for the proper institutions of our society to undertake that task.
Justice O'Connor, with whom Justice White joins, and with whom Justice Souter joins as to Parts II-B-2, II-C, III, and IV, dissenting.
In Pacific Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. Haslip, 499 U. S. 1 (1991), this Court held out the promise that punitive damages
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