John David Ashcroft is an American lawyer, lobbyist and former politician who served as the 79th U.S. Attorney General in the George W. Bush administration from 2001 to 2005. A former U.S. Senator from Missouri and the 50th Governor of Missouri, he later founded the Ashcroft Group, a Washington D.C. lobbying firm.
Sovereign immunity, or crown immunity, is a legal doctrine whereby a sovereign or state cannot commit a legal wrong and is immune from civil suit or criminal prosecution, strictly speaking in modern texts in its own courts. State immunity is a similar, stronger doctrine, that applies to foreign courts.
The Alien Tort Statute, also called the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA), is a section in the United States Code that gives federal courts jurisdiction over lawsuits filed by foreign nationals for torts committed in violation of international law. It was first introduced by the Judiciary Act of 1789 and is one of the oldest federal laws still in effect in the U.S.
In American criminal law, a material witness is a person with information alleged to be material concerning a criminal proceeding. The authority to detain material witnesses dates to the First Judiciary Act of 1789, but the Bail Reform Act of 1984 most recently amended the text of the statute, and it is now codified at 18 U.S.C. § 3144. The most recent version allows material witnesses to be held to ensure the giving of their testimony in criminal proceedings or to a grand jury.
False arrest, unlawful arrest or wrongful arrest is a common law tort, where a plaintiff alleges they were held in custody without probable cause, or without an order issued by a court of competent jurisdiction. Although it is possible to sue law enforcement officials for false arrest, the usual defendants in such cases are private security firms.
Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), was a case in which the US Supreme Court ruled that an implied cause of action existed for an individual whose Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizures had been violated by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. The victim of such a deprivation could sue for the violation of the Fourth Amendment itself despite the lack of any federal statute authorizing such a suit. The existence of a remedy for the violation was implied by the importance of the right violated.
In the United States, qualified immunity is a legal principle that grants government officials performing discretionary (optional) functions immunity from lawsuits for damages unless the plaintiff shows that the official violated "clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known". It is a form of sovereign immunity less strict than absolute immunity that is intended to protect officials who "make reasonable but mistaken judgments about open legal questions", extending to "all [officials] but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law". Qualified immunity applies only to government officials in civil litigation, and does not protect the government itself from suits arising from officials' actions.
The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) is a progressive non-profit legal advocacy organization based in New York City, New York, in the United States. It was founded in 1966 by Arthur Kinoy, William Kunstler and others particularly to support activists in the implementation of civil rights legislation and to achieve social justice.
Nixon v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 731 (1982), was a US Supreme Court case that dealt with immunity from prosecution of government officials performing discretionary functions when their actions did not violate clearly-established law.
Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal, Ruhal Ahmed, and Jamal Al-Harith, four former Guantánamo Bay detainees, filed suit in 2004 in the United States District Court in Washington, DC against former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. They charged that illegal interrogation tactics were permitted to be used against them by Secretary Rumsfeld and the military chain of command. The plaintiffs each sought seek compensatory damages for torture and arbitrary detention while being held at Guantánamo.
Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, also known as Sami Al-Hussayen, is a teacher at a technical college in Riyadh. As a Ph.D. graduate student in computer science at the University of Idaho in the United States, he was arrested and charged in 2003 by the United States with running websites as a webmaster that were linked to organizations that support terrorism. Al-Hussayen is one of the few people at the time to have been charged under a provision that has been described as "overly broad and vague." He was also charged with immigration violations.
Ziglar v. Abbasi, 582 U.S. ___ (2017), is a Supreme Court of the United States case in which the Court determined, by a vote of 4–2, that non-U.S. citizens detained in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks cannot recover monetary damages from high level federal officials for the conditions of their confinement. The case was consolidated with Hastey v. Abbasi, and Ashcroft v. Abbasi. It was argued on January 18, 2017.
Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662 (2009), was a United States Supreme Court case which held that plaintiffs must present a "plausible" cause of action. Alongside Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, Iqbal raised the threshold which plaintiffs needed to meet. Further, the Court held that government officials are not liable for the actions of their subordinates without evidence that they ordered the allegedly discriminatory activity. At issue was whether current and former federal officials, including FBI Director Robert Mueller and former United States Attorney General John Ashcroft, were entitled to qualified immunity against an allegation that they knew of or condoned racial and religious discrimination against Muslim men detained after the September 11 attacks. The decision also "transformed civil litigation in the federal courts" by making it much easier for courts to dismiss individuals' suits.
Arar v. Ashcroft, 585 F.3d 559, was a lawsuit brought by Maher Arar against the United States and various U.S. officials pursuant to the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA), and the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York dismissed Arar's complaint due to lack of personal jurisdiction and national security and foreign policy considerations. This ruling was ultimately upheld by a divided en banc panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
In United States law, absolute immunity is a type of sovereign immunity for government officials that confers complete immunity from criminal prosecution and suits for damages, so long as officials are acting within the scope of their duties. The Supreme Court of the United States has consistently held that government officials deserve some type of immunity from lawsuits for damages, and that the common law recognized this immunity. The Court reasons that this immunity is necessary to protect public officials from excessive interference with their responsibilities and from "potentially disabling threats of liability."
In United States law, the federal government as well as state and tribal governments generally enjoy sovereign immunity, also known as governmental immunity, from lawsuits. Local governments in most jurisdictions enjoy immunity from some forms of suit, particularly in tort. The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act provides foreign governments, including state-owned companies, with a related form of immunity—state immunity—that shields them from lawsuits except in relation to certain actions relating to commercial activity in the United States. The principle of sovereign immunity in US law was inherited from the English common law legal maxim rex non potest peccare, meaning "the king can do no wrong." In some situations, sovereign immunity may be waived by law.
Connick v. Thompson, 563 U.S. 51 (2011), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court considered whether a prosecutor's office can be held liable for a single Brady violation by one of its members on the theory that the office provided inadequate training.
Camreta v. Greene, 563 U.S. 692 (2011), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that in the general case the Court may review a lower court's constitutional ruling at the behest of government officials who have won final judgment on qualified immunity grounds but could not for this case due to details specific to it.
Mullenix v. Luna, 577 U.S. ___ (2015), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that a police officer who shot a suspect during a police pursuit was entitled to qualified immunity. In a per curiam opinion, the Court held that prior precedent did not establish "beyond debate" that the officer's actions were objectively unreasonable.
The Federal Employees Liability Reform and Tort Compensation Act of 1988, also known as the Westfall Act, is a law passed by the United States Congress that modifies the Federal Tort Claims Act to protect federal employees from common law tort lawsuit while engaged in their duties for the government, while giving private citizens a route to seek damage from the government for violations. The law was passed in response to the United States Supreme Court's decision in Westfall v. Erwin, 484 U.S. 292 (1988), which had created a precedent that left federal employees open to liability to civil suits for actions they took while performing their duties for the government.
