Cite as: 512 U. S. 477 (1994)
Souter, J., concurring in judgment
We are not, however, in any such strait, for our enquiry in this case may follow the interpretive methodology employed in Preiser v. Rodriguez, 411 U. S. 475 (1973) (a methodology uniformly applied by the Courts of Appeals in analyzing analogous cases, see, e. g., Young v. Kenny, 907 F. 2d 874, 875-876 (CA9 1990)). In Preiser, we read the "general" § 1983 statute in light of the "specific federal habeas corpus statute," which applies only to "person[s] in custody," 28 U. S. C. § 2254(a), and the habeas statute's policy, embodied in its exhaustion requirement, § 2254(b), that state courts be given the first opportunity to review constitutional claims bearing upon a state prisoner's release from custody. 411 U. S., at 489. Though in contrast to Preiser the state prisoner here seeks damages, not release from custody, the distinction makes no difference when the damages sought are for unconstitutional conviction or confinement. (As the Court explains, nothing in Preiser nor in Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U. S. 539 (1974), is properly read as holding that the relief sought in a § 1983 action dictates whether a state prisoner can proceed immediately to federal court. See ante,
that a single tort in its late 20th-century form can conclusively (and retroactively) dictate the requirements of a 19th-century statute for a discrete category of cases. Defending the historical analogy, the Court suggests that Chief Justice Cooley did not mean what he clearly said and that, despite the Cooley treatise, the Reconstruction-era common law recognized a limited exception to the rule denying a malicious-prosecution plaintiff the benefit of the invalidation of his conviction: an exception for convictions "obtained by some type of fraud." Ante, at 485, n. 4 (citing Crescent City Live Stock Co. v. Butchers' Union Slaughter-House Co., 120 U. S. 141, 151 (1887)). Even if such a narrow exception existed, however, the tort of malicious prosecution as it stood during the mid-19th century would still make for a weak analogy to a statutory action under which, as even the Court accepts, defendants whose convictions were reversed as violating "any righ[t] . . . secured by the Constitution," 42 U. S. C. § 1983, may obtain damages for the unlawful confinement associated with the conviction (assuming, of course, no immunity bar). Nor, of course, would the existence of such an exception explain how one element of a malicious-prosecution action may be imported into § 1983, but not the others.
497
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