270
Opinion of the Court
but later case was the first to address the deprivation of this right by private persons); United States v. Saylor, 322 U. S. 385 (1944) (pre-Screws; prior cases established right to have legitimate vote counted, whereas later case involved dilution of legitimate votes through casting of fraudulent ballots); United States v. Classic, 313 U. S. 299, 321-324 (1941) (pre-Screws; prior cases established right to have vote counted in general election, whereas later case involved primary election); see also Screws, 325 U. S., at 106 (stating that Classic met the test being announced).
But even putting these examples aside, we think that the Sixth Circuit's "fundamentally similar" standard would lead trial judges to demand a degree of certainty at once unnecessarily high and likely to beget much wrangling. This danger flows from the Court of Appeals' stated view, 73 F. 3d, at 1393, that due process under § 242 demands more than the "clearly established" law required for a public officer to be held civilly liable for a constitutional violation under § 1983 or Bivens, see Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U. S. 635 (1987) (Bivens action); Davis v. Scherer, supra (§ 1983 action). This, we think, is error.
In the civil sphere, we have explained that qualified immunity seeks to ensure that defendants "reasonably can anticipate when their conduct may give rise to liability," id., at 195, by attaching liability only if "[t]he contours of the right [violated are] sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right," Anderson, supra, at 640. So conceived, the object of the "clearly established" immunity standard is not different from that of "fair warning" as it relates to law "made specific" for the purpose of validly applying § 242. The fact that one has a civil and the other a criminal law role is of no significance; both serve the same objective, and in effect the qualified immunity test is simply the adaptation of the fair warning standard to give officials (and, ultimately, governments) the same protection from civil liability and its consequences
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