This is a cater special podcast. I'm Caleb Brown. The Supreme Court has denied all

current petitions challenging the court created doctrine of qualified immunity that

doctrine protects government officials, most notably police

officers, from the natural legal consequences of violating Americans constitutional

rights.

The loan dissenter Justice Clarence, is also the justice who invited the public to bring cases challenging that doctrine.

Cato's J. Schweicherd and Clark Neely discuss what the court did, and they note that the controversy around qualified

immunity simply cannot go away until the doctrine itself does.

J. Schweikert, it appears that the Supreme Court has turned down all currently outstanding

petitions dealing with qualified immunity.

As you said before we started recording you are still a bit tilted but you

also in a public statement sent out by the Cato Institute. You said this was a shocking dereliction of duty.

Yes, I think that's exactly right. This issue is a mess that the Supreme Court created needlessly by rewriting our primary

federal civil rights statute in a way that has blunted both the deterrent and

remedial effects of that statute and has contributed in a significant way to our present crisis of confidence in law

enforcement. These cases were perfectly positioned for the court to begin reconsidering and

pulling back this doctrine and in my view frankly there was no excuse for the

court not to take up at least one of these cases.

All right so you also mentioned that the International Association of Chiefs of Police put out a defense of qualified immunity recently and you know it's obviously very disappointing that the court is not going to look at

any of these cases and we don't really know why but what was their defense of

this court invented doctrine and how do you respond to it?

The main defense that the International Association of Chiefs of Police put up was simply

...