492
Souter, J., concurring in judgment
"provide access to a federal forum for claims of unconstitutional treatment at the hands of state officials," while "differ-[ing] in their scope and operation." Ante, at 480. But instead of analyzing the statutes to determine which should yield to the other at this intersection, the Court appears to take the position that the statutes were never on a collision course in the first place because, like the common-law tort of malicious prosecution, § 1983 requires (and, presumably, has always required) plaintiffs seeking damages for unconstitutional conviction or confinement to show the favorable termination of the underlying proceeding. See ante, at 484-487.
While I do not object to referring to the common law when resolving the question this case presents, I do not think that the existence of the tort of malicious prosecution alone provides the answer. Common-law tort rules can provide a "starting point for the inquiry under § 1983," Carey v. Piphus, 435 U. S. 247, 258 (1978), but we have relied on the common law in § 1983 cases only when doing so was thought to be consistent with ordinary rules of statutory construction, as when common-law principles have textual support in other provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1871, see, e. g., id., at 255-256 (damages under § 1983), or when those principles were so fundamental and widely understood at the time § 1983 was enacted that the 42d Congress could not be presumed to have abrogated them silently, see, e. g., Tenney v. Brandhove, 341 U. S. 367, 376 (1951) (immunity under § 1983); Pierson v. Ray, 386 U. S. 547, 553-554 (1967) (same). At the same time, we have consistently refused to allow common-law analogies to displace statutory analysis, declining to import even well-settled common-law rules into § 1983 "if [the statute's] history or purpose counsel against applying [such rules] in § 1983 actions." Wyatt v. Cole, 504 U. S. 158, 164 (1992); see also Tower v. Glover, 467 U. S. 914, 920-921 (1984). Cf. Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U. S. 635, 645 (1987) ("[W]e have never suggested that the precise contours of official im-
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