Antonin Scalia

“ We have expended much ink upon the due-process implications of punitive damages, and the fact-specific nature of the Court's opinion guarantees that we and other courts will expend much more in the years to come. Since jury-assessed punitive damages are a part of our living tradition that dates back prior to 1868, I would end the suspense and categorically affirm their validity. ”

“ Determining whether common-law procedures for awarding punitive damages can deny "due process of law" requires some inquiry into the meaning of that majestic phrase. Its first prominent use appears to have been in an English statute of 1354: " [N] o man of what estate or condition that he be, shall be put out of land or tenement, nor taken nor imprisoned, nor disinherited, nor put to death, without being brought in answer by due process of the law." ”

“ Commentators confirmed that the imposition of punitive damages was not thought to require special procedural safeguards, other than-at most-some review by the trial court. " [I] n cases proper for exemplary damages, it would seem impracticable to set any bounds to the discretion of the jury, though in cases where the wrong done, though with malicious intent, is greatly disproportioned to the amount of the verdict, the court may exercise the power it always possesses to grant a new trial for excessive damages." ”

“ In his influential treatise on the law of damages, Theodore Sedgwick stated that "the rule" with respect to the "salutary doctrine" of exemplary damages is that "where gross fraud, malice, or oppression appears, the jury are not bound to adhere to the strict line of compensation, but may, by a severer verdict, at once impose a punishment on the defendant and hold up an example to the community." ”

“ To say that unbroken historical usage cannot save a procedure that violates one of the explicit procedural guarantees of the Bill of Rights (applicable through the Fourteenth Amendment) is not necessarily to say that such usage cannot demonstrate the procedure's compliance with the more general guarantee of "due process." In principle, what is important enough to have been included within the Bill of Rights has good claim to being an element of "fundamental fairness," whatever history might say ”

“ That day has come, the due process point has been thoroughly briefed and argued, but the Court chooses to decide only that the jury discretion in the present case was not undue. It says that Alabama's particular procedures (at least as applied here) are not so "unreasonable" as to "cross the line into the area of constitutional impropriety," ante, this page. This jury-like verdict provides no guidance as to whether any other procedures are sufficiently "reasonable," and thus perpetuates the uncertainty that our grant of certiorari in this case was intended to resolve. ”

“ XII (1780) (" [N] o subject shall be arrested, imprisoned, despoiled, or deprived of his property, immunities, or privileges, put out of the protection of the law, exiled or deprived of his life, liberty, or estate, but by the judgment of his peers, or the law of the land") , they almost certainly understood it as Coke did. ”

“ This Court did not engage in any detailed analysis of the Due Process Clause until Murray's Lessee v. Hoboken Land & Improvement Co., 18 How. 272, 15 L.Ed. 372 (1856) . That case involved the validity of a federal statute authorizing the issuance of distress warrants, a mechanism by which the Government collected debts without providing the debtor notice or an opportunity for hearing. ”