578
Thomas, J., dissenting
III
Even assuming a constitutional violation, I would find that petitioner is entitled to qualified immunity. The qualified immunity inquiry rests on "the 'objective legal reasonableness' of the action, Harlow [v. Fitzgerald, 457 U. S. 800, 819 (1982)], assessed in light of the legal rules that were 'clearly established' at the time it was taken." Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U. S., at 639. The outcome of this inquiry "depends substantially upon the level of generality at which the relevant 'legal rule' is . . . identified. For example, the right to due process of law is quite clearly established by the Due Process Clause, and thus there is a sense in which any action that violates that Clause . . . violates a clearly established right." Ibid. To apply the standard at such a high level of generality would allow plaintiffs "to convert the rule of qualified immunity . . . into a rule of virtually unqualified liability simply by alleging violation of extremely abstract rights." Ibid. The Court in Anderson criticized the Court of Appeals for considering the qualified immunity question only in terms of the petitioner's "right to be free from warrantless searches of one's home unless the searching officers have probable cause and there are exigent circumstances." Id., at 640. The Court of Appeals should have instead considered "the objective (albeit fact-specific) question whether a reasonable officer could have believed Anderson's warrantless search to be lawful, in light of clearly established law and the information the searching officers possessed." Id., at 641.
The Court errs not only by defining the question at too high a level of generality but also by assessing the question without regard to the relevant circumstances. Even if it were true that no reasonable officer could believe that a search of a home pursuant to a warrant that fails the particularity requirement is lawful absent exigent circumstances— a proposition apparently established by dicta buried in a footnote in Sheppard—petitioner did not know when he car-
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