Graham v. Connor

Common card · No. 341196

Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386 (1989), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court determined that an objective reasonableness standard should apply to a civilian's claim that law enforcement officials used excessive force in the course of making an arrest, investigatory stop, or other "seizure" of their person. Chief Justice Rehnquist once again rejected the idea of §1983 as "a source of substantive rights." The Court ruled that excessive force claims in the context of investigatory stops or arrests should be evaluated under the Fourth Amendment's objective standard rather than a substantive due process standard. The outcome of the case was the creation of an "objective reasonableness test" in examining an officer's actions. That test, over time via case law, would evolve to a standard that could be summed up as "given the facts known at the time, would a similarly trained and experienced officer respond in a similar fashion."

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