Cite as: 540 U. S. 614 (2004)
Opinion of the Court
to whom it is liable as entitled to the $1,000 guarantee. But this way of reading the statute simply pays no attention to the fact that the statute does not speak of liability (and consequent entitlement to recovery) in a freestanding, unqualified way, but in a limited way, by reference to enumerated damages.2
Doe's manner of reading "entitle[ment] to recovery" as satisfied by adverse effect caused by intentional or willful violation is in tension with more than the text, however. It is at odds with the traditional understanding that tort recovery requires not only wrongful act plus causation reaching to the plaintiff, but proof of some harm for which damages can reasonably be assessed. See, e. g., W. Keeton, D. Dobbs, R. Keeton, & D. Owen, Prosser and Keeton on Law of Torts § 30 (5th ed. 1984). Doe, instead, identifies a person as entitled to recover without any reference to proof of damages, actual or otherwise. Doe might respond that it makes sense to speak of a privacy tort victim as entitled to recover without reference to damages because analogous common law would not require him to show particular items of injury in order to receive a dollar recovery. Traditionally, the common law has provided such victims with a claim for "general" damages, which for privacy and defamation torts are presumed damages: a monetary award calculated without reference to specific harm.3
2 Indeed, if adverse effect of intentional or willful violation were alone enough to make a person entitled to recovery, then Congress could have conditioned the entire subsection (g)(4)(A) as applying only to "a person entitled to recovery." That, of course, is not what Congress wrote. As we mentioned before, Congress used the entitled-to-recovery phrase only to describe those entitled to the $1,000 guarantee, and it spoke of entitlement and guarantee only after referring to an individual's actual damages, indicating that "actual damages" is a further touchstone of the entitlement.
3 3 Restatement of Torts § 621, Comment a (1938) ("It is not necessary for the plaintiff [who is seeking general damages in an action for defamation] to prove any specific harm to his reputation or any other loss caused thereby"); 4 id., § 867, Comment d (1939) (noting that damages are avail-
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