Cite as: 515 U. S. 472 (1995)
Breyer, J., dissenting
create procedurally protected"liberty" interests where only minor matters are at stake.
Three sets of considerations, taken together, support my conclusion that the Court need not (and today's generally phrased minimum standard therefore does not) significantly revise current doctrine by deciding to remove minor prison matters from federal-court scrutiny. First, although this Court has said, and continues to say, that some deprivations of an inmate's freedom are so severe in kind or degree (or so far removed from the original terms of confinement) that they amount to deprivations of liberty, irrespective of whether state law (or prison rules) "cabin discretion," e. g., ante, at 483-484; Vitek v. Jones, 445 U. S., at 491-494; Washington v. Harper, 494 U. S., at 221-222; cf. Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Comm. v. McGrath, 341 U. S. 123, 168 (1951) (Frankfurter, J., concurring), it is not easy to specify just when, or how much of, a loss triggers this protection. There is a broad middle category of imposed restraints or deprivations that, considered by themselves, are neither obviously so serious as to fall within, nor obviously so insignificant as to fall without, the Clause's protection.
Second, the difficult line-drawing task that this middle category implies helps to explain why this Court developed its additional liberty-defining standard, which looks to local law (examining whether that local law creates a "liberty" by significantly limiting the discretion of local authorities to impose a restraint). See, e. g., Thompson, supra, at 461; Hewitt, 459 U. S., at 471-472. Despite its similarity to the way in which the Court determines the existence, or nonexistence, of "property" for Due Process Clause purposes, the justification for looking at local law is not the same in the prisoner liberty context. In protecting property, the Due Process Clause often aims to protect reliance, say, reliance upon an "entitlement" that local (i. e., nonconstitutional) law itself has created or helped to define. See Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth, 408 U. S. 564, 577 (1972) ("It is a purpose of
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