For the record, there are no immunity clauses to support judicial immunity in the 14th Amendment.
However, the Supreme court said, “certain immunities were so well established in 1871, when Section 1983 was enacted, that “we presume that Congress would have specifically so provided had it wished to abolish them.”46 and judicial immunity had “never been denied . . . in the courts of [the United States].”47
We now know that judicial immunity had been denied in 6 states. Also, 9 states were undecided on the matter as spoken about here. So, clearly judicial immunity wasn’t well established in the states. So why would congress have to specifically mention that they were included? Also, there are no immunity clauses providing judges an exception to the legislation. Should we just assume that the framers of these acts meant for judges to have immunity it wasn’t clearly established?
Let’s go into this even further.
Did the framers of these Acts mention judicial immunity? Did anyone mention the fact that judges would be able to be sued under the 14th Amendment? To get the answer to that we need to look at the arguments before the legislation had passed to see if they argued how this would affect judicial immunity. Because if they did argue and that judicial immunity would stand, they certainly would have made sure these Acts passed included a clause stating that judges would still have immunity.
Also, did the president mention anything about it before he either approves or vetoed it? Were judges discriminated against black people at the time?
To find out what happened before this legislation was passed, in the next article we will discuss the Debates on Judicial Immunity Before Passing Civil Rights Act of 1866
46 Buckley v. Fitzsimmons, 509 U.S. 259, 268 (1993) (quoting Pierson, 386 U.S. at 554-55).
47See, e.g., O’Shea v. Littleton, 414 U.S. 488, 503 (1974).