Cite as: 510 U. S. 266 (1994)
Stevens, J., dissenting
of trial a defendant charged with crime should have, and I believe the Court has no power to add to or subtract from the procedures set forth by the Founders." Id., at 377 (dissenting opinion). Holding otherwise, the Winship majority resoundingly rejected this position, which Justice Harlan characterized as "fl[ying] in the face of a course of judicial history reflected in an unbroken line of opinions that have interpreted due process to impose restraints on the procedures government may adopt in its dealing with its citizens . . . ." Id., at 373, n. 5 (concurring opinion).
Nevertheless, The Chief Justice and Justice Scalia seem intent on resuscitating a theory that has never been viable, by reading our opinion in Graham v. Connor more broadly than our actual holding. In Graham, which involved a claim of excessive force in the context of an arrest or investigatory stop, we held that "[b]ecause the Fourth Amendment provides an explicit textual source of constitutional protection against this sort of physically intrusive governmental conduct, that Amendment, not the more generalized notion of 'substantive due process,' must be the guide for analyzing these claims." 490 U. S., at 395. Under Graham, then, the existence of a specific protection in the Bill of Rights that is incorporated by the Due Process Clause may preclude what would in any event be redundant reliance on a more general conception of liberty.24 Nothing in Graham, however, forecloses a general due process claim when a more specific source of protection is absent or, as here, open to question. See ante, at 275 (reserving ques-24 Moreover, it likely made no difference to the outcome in Graham that the Court rested its decision on the Fourth Amendment rather than the Due Process Clause. The text of the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against "unreasonable" seizures is no more specific than the Due Process Clause's prohibition against deprivations of liberty without "due process." Under either provision, the appropriate standards for evaluating excessive force claims must be developed through the same common-law process of case-by-case adjudication.
305
Page: Index Previous 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007