Venezuela’s National Assembly installed a Judicial Nominations Committee on Friday to evaluate and select new Supreme Court justices, a step lawmakers described as central to consolidating institutional stability.

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The committee was formally established on October 23, at the Federal Legislative Palace in Caracas, one day after being sworn in during a legislative session.

Giuseppe Alessandrello, who presides over the body, announced that its immediate task is to draw up a work schedule under the Law of the Supreme Court of Justice.

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Alessandrello said the law opened the selection process to ordinary citizens. Writing on social media, he stated that the legislation brought people into the work of “evaluating and selecting the leadership, in this case of the Supreme Court of Justice, to seek plurality.”

#23Oct || Desde el Palacio Federal Legislativo se realiza la Instalación del Comité de Postulaciones Judiciales. pic.twitter.com/MczZA2GxJ7

— Asamblea Nacional 🇻🇪 (@Asamblea_Ven) October 23, 2026

Text reads: “From the Federal Legislative Palace is carried out the installation of the Judicial Applications Committee.”

The committee operates within a broader national dialogue that authorities describe as “building a new Venezuela.” Officials have repeatedly framed the judiciary as the institution responsible for guaranteeing what they call true and just peace among citizens. “The judicial branch is the institution that will guarantee peace among us,” Alessandrello said.

The work schedule will set specific periods for the call for nominations, the evaluation of candidates, and the handling of challenges and responses.

The final goal is to present a definitive list of eligible candidates to the National Assembly.

Alessandrello stressed the weight of the assigned tasks, linking them directly to institutional stability. The committee’s operational work and the eventual delivery of the list will follow the terms and periods established by current law.

The process is governed by the Organic Law of the Supreme Court of Justice and the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. It covers the selection of both principal and alternate justices of the Supreme Court of Justice.

Subrayó el rol clave de la ciudadanía:

"La ley incorporó a los ciudadanos y ciudadanas de la sociedad en este trabajo de evaluar y seleccionar a las directivas, en este caso del Tribunal Supremo de Justicia, para buscar la pluralidad". pic.twitter.com/LhNVkaK6ov

— Asamblea Nacional 🇻🇪 (@Asamblea_Ven) October 23, 2026

Text reads: “The President of the committee, Giuseppe Alessandrello, highlighted the group’s harmony: “Everything we produce is decided unanimously and the auspices with the work of the committee are positive.” He also emphasized the importance of plurality in this process. He stressed the key role of citizenship: “The law incorporated citizens of society in this work of evaluating and selecting directives, in this case from the Supreme Court of Justice, to seek plurality.”

Selecting Court Leadership

The mandate extends beyond the high court itself. It also includes related judicial positions, among them the directorship of the National School of Magistrates.

The committee emerged from a process announced earlier this month. The National Assembly opened the nomination period between October 2 and October 9, allowing interested citizens and institutions to take part in the selection of the court’s leadership.

Once the schedule is finalized, the committee will move through successive phases, receiving nominations, reviewing candidates, and addressing any challenges filed against applicants. Each challenge will carry its own opportunity for a formal response before the list reaches the legislature.

The final list of selected candidates will be delivered to the National Assembly for consideration. The body’s work therefore functions as a preliminary filter within a process whose ultimate decisions rest with the legislature.

Since 1871, a federal statute has authorized Americans to sue state and local officials for violating their constitutional rights. But since 1982, thanks to the court-invented doctrine of qualified immunity, such claims have been allowed only when they allege violations of "clearly established" law.

Because courts often require plaintiffs to meet that standard by citing precedents involving closely similar facts, qualified immunity can prove insurmountable even for victims of outrageous abuses. But as two recent cases illustrate, there are limits to this license for misconduct, meaning officials may still be held accountable when they flout longstanding constitutional principles, even when they do so in novel ways.

In 2022, Mario Rosales and Gracie Lasyone sued two Alexandria, Louisiana, police officers, Samuel Terrell and Jim Lewis, alleging that they had pulled Rosales over without legal justification. The cops ordered Rosales and Lasyone, his girlfriend, out of the car and detained them for 21 minutes, during which they grilled the couple about illegal drugs, frisked Rosales, and instructed him to empty his pockets.

Terrell and Lewis sought refuge in qualified immunity. But last month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled that Rosales and Lasyone had plausibly alleged several Fourth Amendment violations, including a stop based on a "fabricated traffic violation," an improperly prolonged detention, and unjustified searches.

In reaching that conclusion, the 5th Circuit relied mainly on a 1968 decision in which the Supreme Court said police may detain someone only if they reasonably suspect he is involved in criminal activity and may frisk him only if they reasonably suspect he is "armed and dangerous." Assuming the facts alleged in the lawsuit are true, the three-judge panel unanimously held, Terrell and Lewis had failed both of those tests.

When the officers stopped Rosales, the principles that the 5th Circuit applied had been the law of the land for more than half a century. Terrell and Lewis nevertheless argued that "any constitutional violation arising from the traffic stop was not clearly established," which gives you a sense of the chutzpah that qualified immunity invites.

Police commonly pull drivers over, ostensibly for traffic violations, in the hope of implicating them in drug crimes. A case that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit considered this month involved a much more unusual scenario: a judge who locked two children in jail cells because he was frustrated by their resistance to a parental custody decision.

During a 2019 hearing in Taney County, Missouri, a divorced couple agreed that the mother would have primary custody of their two children, then 12 and 14. But contrary to that agreement, the children did not want to go home with their mother, which led to an argument in the courthouse lobby.

Judge Eric Eighmy intervened, telling the children they had to leave with their mother and repeatedly warning them that they could end up in foster care if they refused to do so. When that did not work, Eighmy jailed them until they became more cooperative.

"The time spent in the holding-cell area was between twenty and forty minutes," the 8th Circuit noted. And since Eighmy did not have probable cause to believe the children had committed any offense, "much less one that justified placing them in a holding cell," the court said, their confinement clearly violated the Fourth Amendment.

If so, Eighmy argued, he had no way of knowing that. The 8th Circuit panel unanimously disagreed: "As we put it over a decade and a half ago, long before the events in this case, 'it is clearly established that a warrantless arrest, unsupported by probable cause, violates the Fourth Amendment.'"

Notably, the 8th Circuit did not think the bizarre details of the case counted in Eighmy's favor. "We are not concerned about the lack of a prior case" with "fundamentally similar" facts, it said. "Indeed, given how clear the law is, it would have been surprising to find one."

© Copyright 2026 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

The post 2 Recent Cases Illustrate the Limits of a Doctrine That Often Blocks Civil Rights Claims appeared first on Reason Magazine.

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