This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, November 17th, 2020.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The Supreme Court recently threw out a claim of qualified immunity by prison officials.

The case was an egregious example of government

abuse of an inmate. So is it the opening to throw out the doctrine that's used

so often to protect corrupt or incompetent government officials from civil liability,

Cato's J Schweiker says, don't get your hopes up just yet.

For people who follow qualified immunity closely, the Supreme Court's decision here,

should it really give them hope? It doesn't seem like it's all that significant. Well I think it's more significant than it

looks if you just read the opinion on its own. I mean I think you know the way that

I framed this when I wrote up my blog post about it is that

since the Supreme Court created the clearly established law standard in

1982 which is the which is the defining feature of what qualified immunity is today.

It has decided over 30 qualified immunity decisions.

And up until this recent case only twice has the court ever held that public officials actions violated clearly established law.

In almost every single case that the Supreme Court has decided over the last several decades,

what it has done is reversed lower courts that denied qualified immunity.

In other words it has been consistently sending the message to lower courts to ratchet up how demanding the clearly established law standard is.

And lower courts have gotten the message.

Qualified immunity has become a more and more powerful defense over time.

Describe the elements of this case and how the court reached that conclusion.

Sure, so this case involves, I think, some of the most egregious facts that I have ever seen in any judicial

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