not apply under the "clearly established" rule to a case in which Tennessee police allowed their police dog to bite a surrendered suspect because the suspect had surrendered not by lying down but by sitting on the ground and raising his hands. Critics further argue that the "clearly established" standard discourages and/or delays the establishment of clear rules, even for common circumstances. The first litigant to bring a case against an official under a given set of facts is likely to lose because there is as yet no clearly established standard. Therefore, such a person may not choose to bring the case at all. Furthermore, even if a case is brought and carried to judgment, there is no certainty the decision will establish a clear and generally applicable legal standard. Until such a standard is articulated, qualified immunity will continue to apply in analogous cases. As the Institute for Justice puts it, "Qualified immunity means that government officials can get away with violating your rights as long as they violate them in a way nobody thought of before." Police brutality A significant amount of criticism contends that qualified immunity allows police brutality to go unpunished. Legal researchers Amir H. Ali and Emily Clark, for instance, have argued that "qualified immunity permits law enforcement and other government officials to violate people's constitutional rights with virtual impunity". Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has noted a "disturbing trend" of siding with police officers using excessive force with qualified immunity, describing it as "sanctioning a 'shoot first, think later' approach to policing". She stated: A 2020 Reuters report concurred with Sotomayor, concluding that "the Supreme Court has built qualified immunity into an often insurmountable police defense by intervening in cases mostly to favor the police". The report reviewed over 200 cases involving excess force by police since 2007, and found since the 2009 Pearson change from mandatory sequencing to discretionary sequencing, plaintiffs have had a more difficult time moving their case past the qualified immunity stage. Judicial activism No federal statute explicitly grants qualified immunity—it is a judicial precedent established by the Supreme Court. While qualified immunity has been repeatedly affirmed by courts and legislation has established similar immunity at the state level, critics have argued that the adoption of qualified immunity in federal law amounts to judicial activism. That is, they argue the Supreme Court invented a new legal doctrine that has little