How the Police Became Untouchable
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 14 February 2023
⏱️ 76 minutes
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Summary
Last month's brutal murder of Tyre Nichols by Memphis police has once again sparked a national conversation about the causes of and remedies for persistent police misconduct and abuse. To explore this issue, Jack Goldsmith sat down with Joanna Schwartz, a law professor at UCLA School of Law, who is the author of a new book called, “Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable.” The book argues that police abuse is a result of pervasive pathologies in the legal system that shield from accountability not just police officers, but also their supervisors and the local governments for which they work.
Joanna and Jack discussed the many accountability gaps in the legal regime governing police abuse. Like her book, they focused on problems of achieving justice through the civil rights system, problems that include the high bars to finding a lawyer and to convincing a judge to hear the case, Fourth Amendment doctrine, qualified immunity, and the challenges of municipal liability. They also discussed the best path to reform and the prospects of reform.
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Transcript
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| 1:01.0 | If you get past all of those barriers, find a lawyer, plead a complaint, prove a constitutional violation, then comes qualified immunity. |
| 1:14.0 | Which is a doctrine that says, even if you have violated the Constitution, |
| 1:19.0 | the officer is entitled to qualify immunity so long as they have not violated clearly established law. |
| 1:26.0 | Which has come to be interpreted by the Supreme Court and lower courts as requiring that there be a prior court case |
| 1:32.0 | with nearly identical facts in order to get past qualified immunity. |
| 1:39.0 | I'm Jack Goldsmith and this is the Law Fair Podcast February 14, 2023. |
| 1:46.0 | Last month's brutal murder of Tyree Nichols by Memphis Police has once again sparked a national conversation about the causes of and remedies for persistent police misconduct and abuse. |
| 1:59.0 | To explore this issue, I sat down with Joanna Schwartz, a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, |
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