Cite as: 538 U. S. 760 (2003)
Opinion of the Court
immunity, or whenever the police fail to honor Miranda?* Martinez offers no limiting principle or reason to foresee a stopping place short of liability in all such cases.
Recognizing an action for damages in every such instance not only would revolutionize Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment law, but would beg the question that must inform every extension or recognition of a complementary rule in service of the core privilege: why is this new rule necessary in aid of the basic guarantee? Martinez has offered no reason to believe that the guarantee has been ineffective in all or many of those circumstances in which its vindication has depended on excluding testimonial admissions or barring penalties. And I have no reason to believe the law has been systemically defective in this respect.
But if there is no failure of efficacy infecting the existing body of Fifth Amendment law, any argument for a damages remedy in this case must depend not on its Fifth Amendment feature but upon the particular charge of outrageous conduct by the police, extending from their initial encounter with Martinez through the questioning by Chavez. That claim, however, if it is to be recognized as a constitutional one that may be raised in an action under § 1983, must sound in substantive due process. See generally County of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U. S. 833, 849 (1998) ("[C]onduct 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"). Here, it is enough to say that Justice Stevens shows that Martinez has a serious argument in support of such a position.
II
Whether Martinez may pursue a claim of liability for a substantive due process violation is thus an issue that should
*The question whether the absence of Miranda warnings may be a basis for a § 1983 action under any circumstance is not before the Court.
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