834
Syllabus
of movement through means intentionally applied. E. g., Brower v. County of Inyo, 489 U. S. 593, 597. Pp. 842-845.
(b) Respondents' allegations are insufficient to state a substantive due process violation. Protection against governmental arbitrariness is the core of due process, e. g., Hurtado v. California, 110 U. S. 516, 527, including substantive due process, see, e. g., Daniels v. Williams, 474 U. S. 327, 331, but only the most egregious executive action can be said to be "arbitrary" in the constitutional sense, e. g., Collins v. Harker Heights, 503 U. S. 115, 129; the cognizable level of executive abuse of power is that which shocks the conscience, e. g., id., at 128; Rochin v. California, 342 U. S. 165, 172-173. The conscience-shocking concept points clearly away from liability, or clearly toward it, only at the ends of the tort law's culpability spectrum: Liability for negligently inflicted harm is categorically beneath the constitutional due process threshold, see, e. g., Daniels v. Williams, 474 U. S., at 328, while conduct deliberately intended to injure in some way unjustifiable by any government interest is the sort of official action most likely to rise to the conscience-shocking level, see id., at 331. Whether that level is reached when culpability falls between negligence and intentional conduct is a matter for closer calls. The Court has recognized that deliberate indifference is egregious enough to state a substantive due process claim in one context, that of deliberate indifference to the medical needs of pretrial detainees, see City of Revere v. Massachusetts Gen. Hospital, 463 U. S. 239, 244; cf. Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U. S. 97, 104, but rules of due process are not subject to mechanical application in unfamiliar territory, and the need to preserve the constitutional proportions of substantive due process demands an exact analysis of context and circumstances before deliberate indifference is condemned as conscience shocking, cf. Betts v. Brady, 316 U. S. 455, 462. Attention to the markedly different circumstances of normal pretrial custody and high-speed law enforcement chases shows why the deliberate indifference that shocks in the one context is less egregious in the other. In the circumstances of a high-speed chase aimed at apprehending a suspected offender, where unforeseen circumstances demand an instant judgment on the part of an officer who feels the pulls of competing obligations, only a purpose to cause harm unrelated to the legitimate object of arrest will satisfy the shocks-the-conscience test. Such chases with no intent to harm suspects physically or to worsen their legal plight do not give rise to substantive due process liability. Cf. Whitley v. Albers, 475 U. S. 312, 320-321. The fault claimed on Smith's part fails to meet this test. Smith was faced with a course of lawless behavior for which the police were not to blame. They had done nothing to cause Willard's high-speed driving in the first place, nothing to excuse his flouting of the commonly understood police
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