This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Saturday, October 10th, 2020.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Qualified immunity, the court invented doctrine that protects police from civil liability when they violate the rights of

citizens does take some time to understand but the characterizations of

qualified immunity by law enforcement interest groups reveals they either fundamentally don't understand the doctrine

or they're just making bad faith arguments. Cato's J Schweiker discusses the many examples of where

police groups have presented a false picture of what ending qualified immunity would mean.

In our various discussions about qualified immunity, we've gone through the basic facts of what it is and how it functions, but I still think it's worth

detailing what qualified immunity does and why it exists?

Sure, so qualified immunity is a judicial doctrine

that shields public officials, including

members of law enforcement, from civil liability for their misconduct, unless a court

determines that that official violated clearly established law. And that phrase clearly

established law is really the key because it's a very difficult standard to meet and it requires civil rights plaintiffs usually to identify a prior case already decided with functionally identical facts is their case.

And that's almost impossible.

I mean I wouldn't say it's almost impossible, but it is very difficult.

I mean our research indicates that when qualified immunity is

raised in judicial proceedings it is granted about twice as often as it is denied and

there is some variance in the way the courts granted,

so it's also a bit unpredictable.

But yes, it's a very difficult standard to me.

And just to be clear, the kinds of behavior

...