Privileges and immunities

“ Privileges and immunities—Equality.—The General Assembly shall not grant to any citizen or class of citizens privileges or immunities which upon the same terms shall not equally belong to all citizens. ”

“ Republican institutions and protection from violence to be guarantied, 126, 128, 130, 132, 157, 182, 190, 216, 332, 564. Their citizens to possess mutual privileges and immunities in each state, 132, 381, 563. ”

“ Fourth, A has an indefinite number of legal immunities, using the term ‘immunity’ in the very specific sense of non-liability, or non-subjection to a power on the part of another person. [18] Thus A has the immunity that no ordinary person can alienate A’s legal interest or aggregate of jural relations to another person; the immunity that no ordinary person can extinguish A’s own privileges of using the land; the immunity that no ordinary person can extinguish A’s right that another person, X, shall not enter on the land, or, in other words, create in X a privilege of entering in the land. ”

“ Neither could they be capable of retaining any privileges or immunities: for, if such privileges be attacked, which of all this unconnected assembly has the right, or ability, to defend them? And, when they are dispersed by death or otherwise, how shall they transfer these advantages to another set of students, equally unconnected as themselves? ”

“ No threat has been made by any one to do violence to the enjoyment of these immunities and privileges. No attempt to violate them may be made by the complainants or indeed by any one else in the term of four years during which the act is to remain in force. ”

“ We can claim, if we will, certain exemptions, privileges, immunities, and even demand allowances; but, on the other hand, we are liable to feel set aside by, or to make room for, younger people and find that even the new or old services we have a new urge to render may be declined. ”

“ Mere use immunity, which protects the individual only against the actual use of his compelled testimony and its fruits, satisfies neither the language of the Constitution itself nor the values, purposes, and policies that the privilege was historically designed to serve and that it must serve in a free country. ”

“ When the convict related the narrow escapes from death in his efforts for liberty, the deputy warden was so affected he refused to punish him.
Out in the world, with the blessings of liberty all around us, we do not realize the priceless boon they are to us; but when we stand in the presence of the perils that are undertaken in order to gain them when deprived of their benefits, we begin to comprehend the real value of these sacred immunities of citizenship. ”

“ In nations which have made a false commencement, it would be found that the citizen, or rather the subject, has extorted immunity after immunity, as his growing intelligence and importance have both instructed and required him to defend those particular rights which were necessary to his well-being. ”

“ Violation of the immunity due to foreigners, both as to their persons and their goods, and violation of the privileges appertaining to sanitary establishments and ambulances, as well as the persons and effects in, or belonging to, one or the other, and persons employed in the service of the same so long as they commit no hostile act. ”

“ Nay, it may be well that its supposed immunity should occasionally be disproved by a determined and self-sacrificing citizen, entirely for the general good, and the State forced to pay in extra upkeep for the bad condition of its laws. ”

“ Immunities and Disabilities. As already brought out, immunity is the correlative of disability ("no-power") , and the opposite, or negation, of liability. Perhaps it will also be plain, from the preliminary outline and from the discussion down to this point, that a power bears the same general contrast to an immunity that a right does to a privilege. A right is one's affirmative claim against another, and a privilege is one's freedom from the right or claim of another. Similarly, a power is one's affirmative "control" over a given legal relation as against another ”

“ If one of the States will not deny to any of its own citizens a particular privilege or immunity, if it confer it on all of them by reason of mere naked citizenship, then it may be claimed by every citizen of each State by force of the Constitution ”

“ While, however, they are permitted to remain, as public functionaries, they are entitled to all the immunities and rights, which the law of nations has provided at once for their dignity, their independence, and their inviolability. ”

“ But the Constitution, which guarantees rights and immunities to the citizen, likewise insures to him the privilege of having those rights and immunities judicially declared and protected when such judicial action is properly invoked. ”

“ The rights and duties of the individual
I. Personal immunities :
ARTICLE 14 — Every individual shall onjoy the right to seek to Improve himself materially and spiritually, and have the benefit of personal freedom.
The immunities and freedoms enjoyed by the individual shall not be restricted ■except in cases explicitly prescribed by law, and in conformance with judgments ■duly passed by a court.
No individual shall be subjected to ill-treatment or torture.
No punishment Incompatible with human dignity shall be imposed. ”

“ Such transactional immunity, in my view, steers a well-conceived middle path between, on the one hand, a position that no immunity statute can supplant the constitutional privilege and, on the other, a position that affords the individual the altogether too narrow protection of use immunity as applied to the very government that has compelled him to incriminate himself. ”

“ Once impaired by the recognition of a state immunity found to be excessive, restoration of that power is not likely to be secured through the action of state legislatures; for they are without the inducements to act which have often persuaded Congress to waive immunities thought to be excessive. ”

“ Whenever the Lord Advocate stipulated an immunity, it seemed to be maintained, on the other side, that a sufferer by housebreaking, fire-raising, and other crimes, was to be deprived of his right, as a private party, to prosecute the guilty perpetrator of the wrong, and that the Lord Advocate had a power to enter into a compact by which he could grant immunity for offences, past or future, known or unknown. ”

“ In several instances, moreover, we have concluded that no more than a qualified immunity attaches to administrative employment decisions, even if the same official has absolute immunity when performing other functions. ”

“ Qualified immunity was created to shield government officials from civil liability for the performance of discretionary functions so long as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known. ”

“ As the three questions of abridging their immunities, depriving them of their property, and denying them the protection of the laws are so connected that the authorities upon each are, to a greater or less extent, pertinent to the others, they may properly be considered together. ”

“ I would be willing to go further and say that then, too, the partisan lawyer, the hired advocate, should disappear. The machinery of justice would be all-sufficient to take care of the liberties of every man, to give him proper treatment in disease, to restore him to freedom when safe, and, when that time does come, the unseemly contest in courts will disappear, and justice, tempered with mercy, will have a chance. ”

“ Qualified immunity protects law enforcement officers from being tried for actions taken in the course of their duties. If the immunity applies, it entitles the officer to be free of the "burdens of litigation." ”

“ Under it the arm of the state alone is the organ through which force may be exercised on the individual; the individual is prohibited from averting violence by violence, except so far as is necessary for the immediate protection of life, and altogether from avenging wrong done to him, on the understanding that the society, of which he is an organ and from which he derives his rights, being injured in every injury to him, duly protects him against injury, and when it fails to prevent such injury from being done, inflicts such punishment on the offender as is necessary for future protection. ”

“ Any excess is almost sure to invite a reaction; and, unfortunately, the reactions instead of taking the form of punishment of those guilty of the excess, is apt to take the form either of punishment of the unoffending or of giving immunity, and even strength, to offenders. ”

“ Also, for the same reason, furious madmen, whom all allow to be necessary agents, are in many places of the world, either the objects of judicial punishments, or be allow’d to be dispatch’d by private men. Nay, even men infected with the plague, who are not voluntary agents and are guilty of no crime, are sometimes thought to be justly cut off from society, to prevent contagion from them. ”

“ It is of course understood that penal repression is not in question. What is called crime or punishment, would be called sickness or prophylaxis, but society would retain intact its right, which is not to punish, but simply the right of self-defense. ”

“ Not because it means progress or any bunk like that, but because unless you had a certain amount of crime, and also criminal lawyers to attack the law, the state would never find out the weaknesses in its statutes. Therefore the more crime there is the more the protective power of the state is built up, just as the fever engendered by vaccine renders the human body immune from smallpox! ”

“ The new test to determine responsibility will recognize, as does the law of Germany, that there can be no criminal act where the free determination of the will is excluded by disease, and that the capacity to distinguish between right and wrong is inconclusive. ”

“ Under our Basic Charters, just quoted, the sovereign right and power rests in the People, and the Government has no rights or powers, whatever, except as conferred by the People. QUESTION: Where have our State or National Governments obtained the right to force any medical remedy or operation upon citizens against their will and consent? Where have these governments obtained the right or power to force an infectious and deadly disease upon the human body in defiance of the will and the right of the citizen? ”

“ The fate of these people is in your hands, as is to some extent the fate of society, which is influenced by your verdict. You must fathom the significance of this crime, the danger to society that lurks in such pathological, as it were, individuals as Maslova. You must guard it against infection; it is your duty to guard the innocent, healthy elements of society against contagion, if not destruction. ”

“ Lamb, 738 F.2d 1005, 1008 (9th Cir.1984) . Because qualified immunity protects government officials from suit as well as from liability, it is essential that qualified immunity claims be resolved at the earliest possible stage of litigation. ”

“ There must be immunity from arrest, except for infringing others' rights, with compensation of some kind for improper arrest; respect of the privacy of domicile and correspondence; full liberty of dress, subject to decency; freedom of utterance, whether by speech or publication, subject only to the protection of others from insult, injury, or interference with their equal liberties, the individual being held responsible to society for the proper use of that right. ”