Talk:Absolute immunity
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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 6 January 2020 and 20 March 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Erod393.
Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 13:16, 16 January 2022 (UTC)
Qualified Immunity is in!
[edit]Please do not confuse yourself over the terms, "complete immunity" and "qualified immunity". The terms are often intertwined in case law, and by judges, and the correct words to use are, "Qualified Immunity". When 42 US §1983 (the United States Civil Rights Law) was passed, the only term used was, "qualified immunity". Judges who focused too much on the employment aspect of a defendant decided to change the work 'qualified' to 'complete'. No one is above the law. However, a quick interpretation of the new term certainly looks like they are. A review of tort law shows that:
1. A federal, state, of municipal employee has qualified immunity from civil lawsuits as long as the actions he performed at work were within the scope of his employment, with forgiveness for negligence.
2. This same employee loses his immunity if his actions at work stepped over the line into the arena of gross negligence, or criminal conduct.
3. Although the term qualified immunity means complete immunity from liability in scenario #1, it is conditioned upon faithfully executing one's duties. for this reason, it is called, "qualified immunity.
Contrary to law school learning, state laws are nearly identical to federal law. State laws do not usurp federal law, per the Supremacy Clause in the Constitution, Article VI, Clause 2, and laws are often passed to mirror federal legislation (Tort law, The Freedom of Information Act, and RICO laws).
There is a severe problem with intertwining the words "complete immunity" and "qualified immunity'. In civil lawsuits against public officials, and potentially some judiciary personnel, judges place an extremely high bar of proof upon plaintiffs. For example, a simple, "official misconduct" civil lawsuit against a local elected official often requires the tortfeaser (the official) to have committed a criminal act against his accuser, with a simple link of taxpayer to mayor not sufficient to bring about a cause of action. For this reason, local elected officials enjoy a standard of sovereign immunity against the electorate. The same common law statutes equally apply to elected officials, so that scenario's 1 & 2, above, should be the sole litmus tests used by our judges.
A second, equally severe problem exists with the age old judicial immunity from lawsuits. When reviewing the extremely well written segment of this law...
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/article-3/section-1/judicial-immunity-from-suit
...one should keep in mind the doctrine of qualified immunity, and that it applies here as well. All semantics aside, our judges enjoy qualified immunity. If they make mistakes that go beyond the field of negligence, and into the field of gross negligence, or if they violate constitutional, statutory, or the common laws of the land with mens rea, they must be held to standard. Judicial immunity is just another form of qualified immunity, and nothing else. All fair minded judges should never have a problem with it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.70.223.92 (talk) 20:24, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
Does "absolute immunity" actually make anyone immune to criminal prosecution in the United States?
[edit]The first sentence implies that it can, but the cited article doesn't back that up - it mentions only immunity to civil suits. There are DOJ guidelines that prevent it from prosecuting a sitting president, but that's not the same thing. If there are not in fact any offices in the United States for which absolute immunity provides protection from criminal prosecution, the article should not mention that as part of the definition. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:643:8401:6EB0:B8D2:FC77:4C87:E165 (talk) 01:31, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
Response: Yes! "Absolute Immunity" = "Complete Immunity" = "Sovereign Immunity". It's the reason we had the American Revolution. These terms should be outlawed from federal and state statute, and wherever they exist, they should be replaced with "Qualified Immunity". Judges with big egos confuse federal and state case law, and they make court cases hard to understand. Ironically, the only place where real Sovereign Immunity exists is in the Judiciary: In 1872 the Court made a ruling that gave itself Complete/Absolute/Sovereign immunity over its decisions. They are unaccountable, and a judge can exact revenge from the bench to one and to all, and get away with it. This must end immediately! We must end this, and we must have complete transparency and oversight.