386
Opinion of Scalia, J.
ial system, and neglects the harm that may be caused pro se litigants even when courts do comply with the Court's newly minted procedure. The practice of judicial recharacterization of pro se litigants' motions is a mutation of the principle that the allegations of a pro se litigant's complaint are to be held "to less stringent standards than formal pleadings drafted by lawyers." Haines v. Kerner, 404 U. S. 519, 520 (1972) (per curiam). "Liberal construction" of pro se pleadings is merely an embellishment of the notice-pleading standard set forth in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and thus is consistent with the general principle of American jurisprudence that "the party who brings a suit is master to decide what law he will rely upon." The Fair v. Kohler Die & Specialty Co., 228 U. S. 22, 25 (1913). Our adversary system is designed around the premise that the parties know what is best for them, and are responsible for advancing the facts and arguments entitling them to relief.
Recharacterization is unlike "liberal construction," in that it requires a court deliberately to override the pro se litigant's choice of procedural vehicle for his claim. It is thus a paternalistic judicial exception to the principle of party self-determination, born of the belief that the "parties know better" assumption does not hold true for pro se prisoner litigants.
I am frankly not enamored of any departure from our traditional adversarial principles. It is not the job of a federal court to create a "better correspondence" between the substance of a claim and its underlying procedural basis. But if departure from traditional adversarial principles is to be allowed, it should certainly not occur in any situation where there is a risk that the patronized litigant will be harmed rather than assisted by the court's intervention. It is not just a matter of whether the litigant is more likely, or even much more likely, to be helped rather than harmed. For the overriding rule of judicial intervention must be "First, do no harm." The injustice caused by letting the litigant's
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