Cite as: 520 U. S. 259 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
ing Thirteenth Amendment rights, did characterize our task as ascertaining the crime charged "by looking to the scope of the Thirteenth Amendment prohibition . . . specified in our prior decisions," id., at 941, in at least one other case we have specifically referred to a decision of a Court of Appeals in defining the established scope of a constitutional right for purposes of § 241 liability, see Anderson v. United States, 417 U. S. 211, 223-227 (1974). It is also to the point, as we explain below, that in applying the rule of qualified immunity under 42 U. S. C. § 1983 and Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, 403 U. S. 388 (1971), we have referred to decisions of the Courts of Appeals when enquiring whether a right was "clearly established." See Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U. S. 511, 533 (1985); Davis v. Scherer, 468 U. S. 183, 191- 192 (1984); see also id., at 203-205 (Brennan, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part); Elder v. Holloway, 510 U. S. 510, 516 (1994) (treating Court of Appeals decision as "relevant authority" that must be considered as part of qualified immunity enquiry). Although the Sixth Circuit was concerned, and rightly so, that disparate decisions in various Circuits might leave the law insufficiently certain even on a point widely considered, such a circumstance may be taken into account in deciding whether the warning is fair enough, without any need for a categorical rule that decisions of the Courts of Appeals and other courts are inadequate as a matter of law to provide it.
Nor have our decisions demanded precedents that applied the right at issue to a factual situation that is "fundamentally similar" at the level of specificity meant by the Sixth Circuit in using that phrase. To the contrary, we have upheld convictions under § 241 or § 242 despite notable factual distinctions between the precedents relied on and the cases then before the Court, so long as the prior decisions gave reasonable warning that the conduct then at issue violated constitutional rights. See United States v. Guest, 383 U. S. 745, 759, n. 17 (1966) (prior cases established right of interstate travel,
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