The Illusion of Absolute Prosecutorial Immunity: The Supreme Court's Legislative Magic Trick

• Pages: 675-697
• Date: 01 July 2024
• Published date: 01 July 2024
• Author: Emily Nicole Janikowski
• Subject Matter: Administrative & Public Law

The Illusion of Absolute Prosecutorial Immunity:

The Supreme Court’s Legislative Magic Trick

EMILY NICOLE JANIKOWSKI*

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 676

I. INVENTING ABSOLUTE PROSECUTORIAL IMMUNITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . 678

A. Examining the Court’s Decision in Imbler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 678

1. The Facts .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 678

2. The Court’s Analysis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 679

a. The Court’s Opinion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 679

b. The Concurrence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 679

B. Usage of the Derogation Canon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 680

C. Analyzing the Text of Section 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 681

D. Examining the Forty-Second Congress’s Debates . . . . . . . . . . 682

1. Application to All State Off‌icials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 684

2. Desire for Accountability. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 685

a. Federal Jurisdiction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 685

b. Broadness of Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 686

E. Underlying Context of Swift v. Tyson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 687

F. Reviewing the Not “Well Settled” Common Law . . . . . . . . . . . 688

1. History of State Prosecutors at Common Law . . . . . . . . . 689

2. Quasi-Judicial Nature of Public Prosecutors at Common

Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 690

3. Quasi-Judicial Off‌icers Today 691 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

* Georgetown University Law Center, J.D. 2024; Executive Editor, The Georgetown Law Journal’s

Annual Review of Criminal Procedure, 53rd Edition; University of Akron, B.A.S.W. 2021. © 2024,

Emily Nicole Janikowski. Many thanks to Professor Paul Clement for his feedback and advice, and to

the editors and staff of the Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy for their hard work every step

of the way. This Note is dedicated with love to all my friends and family. All errors are my own.

675

II. HOW USURPING A LEGISLATIVE POWER REMOVES A CHECK ON

PROSECUTORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 692

A. Removal of a Check by Congress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 692

B. Legislative Intent Comported with State-led Populist

Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 694

C. Resulting Lack of Accountability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 695

1. Indicates a Lack of Impartiality in the Judiciary . . . . . . . . 695

2. Creates a Power Dichotomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 696

CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 696

INTRODUCTION

He’s going to show you the bricks. He’ll show you they got straight sides.

He’ll show you how they got the right shape. He’ll show them to you in a very

special way, so that they appear to have everything a brick should have. But

there’s one thing he’s not gonna show you. When you look at the bricks from

the right angle, they’re as thin as this playing card. His whole case is an illu-

sion, a magic trick.

1

In 1871, the Forty-Second Congress, on the heels of sociopolitical

Reconstruction-era upheaval, passed the Civil Rights Act.

2

Oft referred to as the

Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 or the Enforcement Act of 1871, this statute, pur-

ported to do exactly that: enforce the Fourteenth Amendment, defeat the Ku

Klux Klan, and expand civil rights in the South, protecting both recently

enslaved Blacks and white Republican voters who were being disenfranchised.

3

Section 1 of this Act lives on today as the highly litigated 42 U.S.C. § 1983. In

1994, one in ten civil district court f‌ilings were section 1983 claims.

4

More

recently, from 2023 to 2024, over 17,000 “other civil rights cases” were f‌iled, of

which section 1983 presumably constituted a signif‌icant portion.

5

ADMIN. OFF. OF THE U.S. CTS., MAR. 2024 CIVIL JUSTICE REFORM ACT REPORT, tbl. C-2 (2024).

https://www.uscourts.gov/statistics-reports/september-2023-civil-justice-reform-act [https://perma.cc/

SQZ9-Y3X3].

Section 1983,

today, states, in relevant part:

1. MY COUSIN VINNY (Twentieth Century Fox 1992).

2. Civil Rights Act of 1871, ch. 22, § 1, 17 Stat. 13 (1871) (codif‌ied as amended at 42 U.S.C.

§ 1983).

3. See Zamir Ben-Dan & Rigodis Appling, Breaking the Backbone of Unlimited Power: The Case

for Abolishing Absolute Immunity for Prosecutors in Civil Rights Lawsuits, 73 RUTGERS U. L. REV.

1373, 1387–92 (2021).

4. ROGER A. HANSON & HENRY W. K. DALEY, BUREAU OF JUST. STAT., DOJ, PUB. NO. 92-BJ-CX-

K026, CHALLENGING THE CONDITIONS OF PRISONS AND JAILS: A REPORT ON SECTION 1983 LITIGATION 2

(1994).

5.

676 THE GEORGETOWN JOURNAL OF LAW & PUBLIC POLICY [Vol. 22:675