Cite as: 515 U. S. 472 (1995)
Breyer, J., dissenting
II
The Fourteenth Amendment says that a State shall not "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, § 1. In determining whether state officials have deprived an inmate, such as Conner, of a procedurally protected "liberty," this Court traditionally has looked either (1) to the nature of the deprivation (how severe, in degree or kind) or (2) to the State's rules governing the imposition of that deprivation (whether they, in effect, give the inmate a "right" to avoid it). See, e. g., Kentucky Dept. of Corrections v. Thompson, 490 U. S. 454, 460-461, 464-465 (1989). Thus, this Court has said that certain changes in conditions may be so severe or so different from ordinary conditions of confinement that, whether or not state law gives state authorities broad discretionary power to impose them, the state authorities may not do so "without complying with minimum requirements of due process." Vitek v. Jones, 445 U. S. 480, 491-494 (1980) ("involuntary commitment to a mental hospital"); Washington v. Harper, 494 U. S. 210, 221-222 (1990) ("unwanted administration of antipsychotic drugs"). The Court has also said that deprivations that are less severe or more closely related to the original terms of confinement nonetheless will amount to deprivations of procedurally protected liberty, provided that state law (including prison regulations) narrowly cabins the legal power of authorities to impose the deprivation (thereby giving the inmate a kind of right to avoid it). See Hewitt v. Helms, 459 U. S. 460, 471-472 (1983) (liberty interest created by regulations "requiring . . . that administrative segregation will not occur absent specified substantive predicates"); Thompson, supra, at 461 ("method of inquiry . . . always has been to examine closely the language of the relevant statutes and regulations"); Board of Pardons v. Allen, 482 U. S. 369, 382 (1987) (O'Connor, J., dissenting) (insisting upon "standards that place real limits on decisionmaker discretion");
493
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