Bivens Claim Law and Legal Definition
Bivens Claim refers to a judicially created Constitutional claim which is outside the purview of the Federal Tort Claims Act. It is named after the decision in Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Fed. Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388, 423 (U.S. 1971). In this case, the court held that the Congress should develop an administrative or quasi-judicial remedy against the government itself to afford compensation and restitution for persons whose Fourth Amendment rights have been violated. It further recommended that Congress could enact a statute along the following lines:
(a)a waiver of sovereign immunity as to the illegal acts of law enforcement officials committed in the performance of assigned duties;
(b) the creation of a cause of action for damages sustained by any person aggrieved by conduct of governmental agents in violation of the Fourth Amendment or statutes regulating official conduct;
(c) the creation of a tribunal, quasi-judicial in nature or perhaps patterned after the United States Court of Claims, to adjudicate all claims under the statute;
(d) a provision that this statutory remedy is in lieu of the exclusion of evidence secured for use in criminal cases in violation of the Fourth Amendment; and
(e) a provision directing that no evidence, otherwise admissible, shall be excluded from any criminal proceeding because of violation of the Fourth Amendment.
Prior to this judicial decision there was little effective recourse to blatant constitutional violations by federal agents and authorities.
