Case Citator › Hope v. Pelzer

Hope v. Pelzer

Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.

Questioned by some courts
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Citation
536 U.S. 730
Decided
Confirmed treatments
1
Flagged citations read
283 of 283
Citing cases (total)
4,958
Treatment dates
2011
Questioned by some courts
At least one reviewed court has questioned this case’s reasoning or continued validity. No reviewed court has overruled it. Hope v. Pelzer is questioned: all 283 flagged citations have been read, with the one confirmed treatment listed below. Morgan v. Swanson identified tension between Hope's obvious-case fair-warning language and Ashcroft v. al-Kidd's warning against defining clearly established law at a high level of generality, but did not resolve whether Hope's language survived.
More on how this was screened

The other reviewed opinions applied Hope's fair-warning standard, reported Hope's rejection of the Eleventh Circuit's former materially-similar-facts rule, or directed nearby treatment language at other authorities; duplicate copies of the same opinion and withdrawn or vacated opinions do not create additional treatments.

Every treatment on this page is written from the citing opinion itself, with a verbatim quote, never copied from a commercial citator. A citation flagged by our screen but not shown here was read and found not to weaken this case.

4,958 later cases cite Hope v. Pelzer; 283 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.

Relying on Hope v. Pelzer?

This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.

Treatments

Questioned

  • The en banc Fifth Circuit questioned whether Hope's statements allowing general law to provide fair warning in obvious cases survived Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, while expressly leaving the issue unresolved.

    Morgan v. Swanson · Fifth Circuit (en banc) · filed

    That said, this case does not call on us to decide whether the Court’s statements in Hope survive alKidd: the constitutional issue in this case is far from “beyond debate,” as evidenced by a large body of oft-conflicting case law and the variety of opinion among members of this Court. We leave for another day the question of whether and when a constitutional violation may be so “obvious” that its illegality is clear from only a generalized statement of law.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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