Judicial Immunity From Civil Damages

The immunity of judges from civil damages for their official acts dates from the beginning of the sixteenth century and is well established in the common law and in American precedents. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Randall v. Brigham (1869), that private persons may not sue judges for their judicial acts however injurious or deserving of condemnation those acts may be. Three years later, in Bradley v. Fisher (1872), the Court stated that immunity was a “general” principle of the “highest importance” (p. 347).

The Court that ruled in Bradley immunized malicious and corrupt actions unless they were done in the “clear absence of all jurisdiction” (p. 351). The court adopted this interpretation because judges' determinations about their jurisdiction are extremely difficult matters; therefore, jurisdiction should be broadly construed lest judges incur unfair liability. A modern case, Stump v. Sparkman (1978) graphically exemplifies the scope of judicial immunity today. Stump held that the signature of a judge of a state court of general jurisdiction on a mother's petition to sterilize her fifteen‐year‐old daughter was a judicial act, even though the petition received no docket number, was not filed in the clerk's office, and was approved in an ex parte proceeding without notice to the minor or the appointment of a guardian ad litem. The Supreme Court majority conceded the absence of any state law or precedent authorizing the judge's act but held that the absence of any Indiana statute or case law prohibiting the judge's action immunized his obviously wrongful act. Stump also reaffirmed an earlier holding that judicial immunity applies to civil rights suits. Here the minor, who had been told she was operated on for appendicitis, found herself unable to become pregnant following her marriage and thereupon discovered that she had been sterilized.

In Pulliam v. Allen (1984), however, the Supreme Court ruled that judicial immunity neither bars prospective injunctive relief against judicial officers acting in their official capacity nor the award of attorneys' fees under the Civil Rights Attorney's Fees Awards Act. A Virginia magistrate had jailed two men—one for fourteen days, and the other four times for periods of two to six days—for failure to post bond following their arrest for abusive and insulting language and public drunkenness, for which they could not receive a jail sentence. The men brought a lawsuit against the judge and successfully obtained a federal court ruling that it was unconstitutional for a judge to require bail for nonjailable offenses. An injunction forbidding continuation of that practice was also granted. The same court awarded them several thousand dollars in costs and attorneys' fees.

Efforts by the Conference of State Chief Justices, the Judicial Conference of the United States, and the American Bar Association to persuade Congress to overturn the Pulliam decision and restore full judicial immunity did not succeed during the 1980s. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Legal Defense Fund, Inc., have spearheaded opposition to such efforts.

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See also Sovereign Immunity

— Harold J. Spaeth