The Bivens Doctrine, which stands for the principle that judges may infer private causes of action for money damages against federal officers from a constitutional text that does not expressly create such remedies, has faced attack from Originalists on the Supreme Court of the United States. Every case seeking to extend the Bivens principle to a new context meets rejection from the Court with concurrences calling for overturning it altogether. This Article will argue that an Originalist approach to interpreting the Constitution, specifically the Original Methods subset of the ascendant lens of Original Public Meaning, permits and counsels in favor of the retention of Bivens actions.

This Article will provide an overview of the historical understanding of remedies in English law as well as in America at the time of the Constitution’s creation and ratification. It will then discuss Bivens and its progeny, the cases where the Supreme Court recognized implied constitutional causes of action against federal officers. At this point, it will also discuss the problems with the traditional remedies for such violations. Finally, the article will remedy the defects of Bivens’ reasoning from the lens of Original Public Meaning by grounding this doctrine in the text of Article III’s jurisdictional grant, explaining the problem posed by exclusive legislative power to define remedies, and addressing criticism from originalists of the practice of inferring implied constitutional causes of action.