This is the Kator Daily Podcast for Wednesday, February 28th, 2018.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Why do so many police officers seem to escape prosecution or sometimes even charges

when they're accused of of and by all rights have

committed acts that would send anyone else to prison. It's called qualified

immunity and it protects bad cops from the costs of their misconduct.

So what is qualified immunity and why do we have it?

Clark Neely and J. Schweicherd of the Cato Institute explain.

When it comes to liability for the actions that we take, how do you and I differ from cops?

We're held to a much higher standard than police are.

Doctors are held to a higher standard.

Architects, pretty much everybody you could name except prosecutors are held to a higher

standard than police officers when it comes to liability for your own misconduct

that results in an injury to somebody else. The courts have gone out of their way

to create a whole web of special exceptions and doctrines that all add up to a policy of what amounts

to near zero accountability for law enforcement.

Well, I mean, I think, no, I mean, I think that's put exactly correctly.

I think to go slightly more specifically,

it's one sort of common maxim in the law

is that ignorance of the law is no defense.

Ordinary citizens are given really the extraordinary and probably

literally impossible burden of trying to comply with thousands or if you

...