752
Opinion of Souter, J.
e. g., Steffel v. Thompson, 415 U. S. 452, 454, 475 (1974) (declaratory relief under § 1983 available in suit claiming state criminal statute constitutionally invalid), none of which implicate, or always implicate, a right to jury trial. Comparing inverse condemnation actions to the class of § 1983 actions that are treated like torts does not, therefore, preserve a uniformity in jury practice under § 1983 that would otherwise be lost. Justice Scalia's metaphor is, indeed, an apt one: § 1983 is a prism, not a procrustean bed.
Nor, as I have already mentioned, see supra, at 748-750, is there a sound basis for treating inverse condemnation as providing damages for a tort. A State's untoward refusal to provide an adequate remedy to obtain compensation, the sine qua non of an inverse condemnation remedy under § 1983, is not itself the independent subject of an award of damages (and respondents do not claim otherwise); the remedy is not damages for tortious behavior, but just compensation for the value of the property taken.
2
Even if an argument for § 1983 simplicity and uniformity were sustainable, however, it would necessarily be weaker than the analogy with direct condemnation actions. That analogy rests on two elements that are present in each of the two varieties of condemnation actions: a Fifth Amendment constitutional right and a remedy specifically mandated by that same amendment. Because constitutional values are superior to statutory values, uniformity as between different applications of a given constitutional guarantee is more important than uniformity as between different applications of a given statute. If one accepts that proposition as I do, a close analogy between direct and inverse condemnation proceedings is necessarily stronger than even a comparably close resemblance between two statutory actions.
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