Sandin v. Conner, 515 U.S. 472, 19 (1995)

Page:   Index   Previous  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20  21  22  23  24  25  26  Next

490

SANDIN v. CONNER

Ginsburg, J., dissenting

than the particular rights or privileges conferred by specific laws or regulations.").2

Deriving the prisoner's due process right from the code for his prison, moreover, yields this practical anomaly: a State that scarcely attempts to control the behavior of its prison guards may, for that very laxity, escape constitutional accountability; a State that tightly cabins the discretion of its prison workers may, for that attentiveness, become vulnerable to constitutional claims. An incentive for ruleless prison management disserves the State's penological goals and jeopardizes the welfare of prisoners.

To fit the liberty recognized in our fundamental instrument of government, the process due by reason of the Constitution similarly should not depend on the particularities of the local prison's code. Rather, the basic, universal requirements are notice of the acts of misconduct prison officials say the inmate committed, and an opportunity to respond to the charges before a trustworthy decisionmaker. See generally Friendly, "Some Kind of Hearing," 123 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1267, 1278-1281 (1975) (an unbiased tribunal, notice of the proposed government action and the grounds asserted for it, and an opportunity to present reasons why the proposed action should not be taken are fundamental; additional safeguards depend on the importance of the private interest, the utility of the particular safeguards, and the burden of affording them).

2 The Court describes a category of liberty interest that is something less than the one the Due Process Clause itself shields, something more than anything a prison code provides. The State may create a liberty interest, the Court tells us, when "atypical and significant hardship [would be borne by] the inmate in relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life." Ante, at 484; see ante, at 486. What design lies beneath these key words? The Court ventures no examples, leaving consumers of the Court's work at sea, unable to fathom what would constitute an "atypical, significant deprivation," ibid., and yet not trigger protection under the Due Process Clause directly.

Page:   Index   Previous  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20  21  22  23  24  25  26  Next

Last modified: October 4, 2007