Immunity & Accountability

In January, the Institute for Justice announced an exciting and vitally important new endeavor: IJ’s Project on Immunity and Accountability. As IJ Senior Vice President and Litigation Director Dana Berliner described in the last issue of Liberty & Law, immunity doctrines shield government officials from having to pay damages even when they blatantly violate someone’s constitutional rights. What’s worse, courts routinely use the fact that officials don’t have to pay to avoid deciding whether anyone’s rights were violated at all.