HARDLY A COINCIDENCE:

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas took the opportunity Friday to again remind his fellow justices that it's time to seriously rethink the doctrine of qualified immunity. The court denied certiorari in Hoggard v. Rhodes, leaving in place the Eighth Circuit's ruling in favor of campus police who forced a college student to leave an area near a student union building. [...]

As Law&Crime has discussed at length, qualified immunity is a judge-created concept that shields federal and state officials from liability. It requires a plaintiff to show that the right of which they were deprived is either specifically codified by statute or is otherwise "clearly established" by case law at the time of the incident.  The doctrine, originally intended to put a manageable limit on post-Civil War lawsuits against police agencies in the South, has been often criticized in modern times for depriving victims of legal recourse even in grossly unfair contexts.

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