In recent years, the justices have regularly shielded police from being sued, even when officers wrongly shoot innocent people in their own homes.

They have done so by extending a rule adopted in the 1980s that gave government officials "qualified immunity" from being sued over constitutional violations unless they did something that the court had already clearly defined as illegal and unconstitutional. It is not enough to cite the words of the Constitution, such as its ban on "unreasonable searches and seizures." To bring a claim before a jury, the injured plaintiff must show the officer had obviously and unquestionably violated a recognized and specific right. In practice, this rule has served as a broad shield to prevent cases from proceeding.

It is a trend that has long drawn the ire of civil rights lawyers, who say it denies victims the right to hold officers accountable for an excessive use of force, particularly when cases don't result in criminal prosecution or disciplinary action. But in the past year, the precedent has also come under attack from University of Chicago law professor William Baude, a prominent conservative legal scholar, and from the libertarian CATO Institute for what it called the court's "unlawful assault on civil rights and police accountability."

Baude, a former clerk for Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., contends the high court has "concocted" an immunity doctrine for the police that is not based on the law or history. "It's an unlawful invention, a judge-made doctrine, and it seems to be getting worse in the Supreme Court," he said last week.

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