Qualified immunity has become one of the Supreme Court’s most controversial doctrines. But while there has been plenty of commentary criticizing the Court’s existing clearly-established-law test, there has been no thorough historical analysis examining the complicated subject of state-officer immunities under nineteenth-century common law. Yet the legitimacy of state-officer immunities, under the Court’s precedents, depends on the common law as it existed when Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1871. In the Supreme Court’s own words, it cannot “make a freewheeling policy choice” and must apply immunities that Congress implicitly adopted from the “common-law tradition.”

中文翻译：

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普通法下的合格和绝对豁免

限定豁免已成为最高法院最具争议的原则之一。但是，尽管有大量评论批评法院现有的明确确立的法律测试，但没有彻底的历史分析来检验 19 世纪普通法下的国家官员豁免权这一复杂主题。然而，根据法院的判例，州官员豁免权的合法性取决于国会通过 1871 年民权法案时存在的普通法。用最高法院自己的话来说，它不能“做出随心所欲的政策选择”，并且必须应用国会从“普通法传统”中隐含采用的豁免权。