of the incident. Pearson v. Callahan The Supreme Court's decision in Pearson et al. v. Callahan overturned its decision in Saucier v. Katz and the two-step inquiry giving more discretion to the lower courts. The inquiry into the law or into the Constitution in relation to similar cases brought before the courts was up to the courts to decide. Application of qualified immunity Discretionary function requirement Qualified immunity only applies to acts that are "discretionary" rather than ministerial. Courts specifically distinguish discretionary acts from ministerial acts. A discretionary act requires an official to determine "whether an act should be done or a course pursued" and to determine the best means of achieving the chosen objective. By contrast, a ministerial act is of a "clerical nature"the official is typically required to perform the action regardless of their own opinion. Even ministerial tasks will sometimes involve a small amount of discretion, but this discretion will not necessarily satisfy the requirements of qualified immunity. Clearly established law requirement Qualified immunity does not protect officials who violate "clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which reasonable person would have known". This is an objective standard, meaning that the standard does not depend on the subjective state of mind of the official but rather on whether a reasonable person would determine that the relevant conduct violated clearly-established law. Whether the law is "clearly established" depends on whether the case law has addressed the disputed issue or has established the "contours of the right" such that it is clear that the official's conduct is illegal. It is undisputed that Supreme Court opinions can "clearly establish" the rule for the entire country. However, circuit court of appeals opinions may have a more limited effect. Circuit courts of appeals typically treat their opinions as clearly establishing the law within that circuit—though the Supreme Court has cast doubt on this theory. In order to meet the requirement of clearly established law, the facts of the instant case must also fairly closely resemble the facts of the case relied on as precedent. Qualified immunity sequencing The concept of testing whether the official action was covered by qualified immunity was first raised in the 1991 case Siegert v. Gilley (1991) in which the Supreme Court affirmed a dismissal of a lawsuit due to lack of clear demonstration that a constitutional right had been violated at the time of the action as