Cite as: 523 U. S. 833 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
ard governing searches and seizures, not the due process standard of liability for constitutionally arbitrary executive action. See Graham v. Connor, supra, at 395 ("[A]ll claims that law enforcement officers have used excessive force— deadly or not—in the course of an arrest, investigatory stop, or other 'seizure' of a free citizen should be analyzed under the Fourth Amendment and its 'reasonableness' standard, rather than under a 'substantive due process' approach" (emphasis in original)); Albright v. Oliver, 510 U. S., at 276 (Ginsburg, J., concurring); id., at 288, n. 2 (Souter, J., concurring in judgment). One Court of Appeals has indeed applied the rule of Graham to preclude the application of principles of generalized substantive due process to a motor vehicle passenger's claims for injury resulting from reckless police pursuit. See Mays v. East St. Louis, 123 F. 3d 999, 1002-1003 (CA7 1997).
The argument is unsound. Just last Term, we explained that Graham
"does not hold that all constitutional claims relating to physically abusive government conduct must arise under either the Fourth or Eighth Amendments; rather, Graham simply requires that if a constitutional claim is covered by a specific constitutional provision, such as the Fourth or Eighth Amendment, the claim must be analyzed under the standard appropriate to that specific provision, not under the rubric of substantive due process." United States v. Lanier, 520 U. S. 259, 272, n. 7 (1997).
Substantive due process analysis is therefore inappropriate in this case only if respondents' claim is "covered by" the Fourth Amendment. It is not.
The Fourth Amendment covers only "searches and seizures," neither of which took place here. No one suggests that there was a search, and our cases foreclose finding a seizure. We held in California v. Hodari D., 499 U. S. 621,
843
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