In 1967, the Supreme Court invented a brand new authorized precept known as certified immunity that restricted the general public’s proper to sue sure authorities staff. Seemingly designed to guard authorities officers from frivolous lawsuits, in apply, it largely shields the police from being sued for misconduct, even when they’ve violated somebody’s constitutional rights. In impact, it makes it completely authorized for the police to infringe on residents’ rights.
How did we get to the purpose the place the people who find themselves sworn to guard the regulation do not need to observe it? In her guide, Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable, UCLA regulation professor Joanna Schwartz deftly explains the difficult net of legal guidelines and insurance policies that exist within the United States for the only real objective of defending the police. In the method, she shines a lightweight on each side of the justice system, from the federal jury system, which is disproportionately white and center class, to Supreme Court selections that make little sense within the context of on a regular basis life.
After finding out police accountability for many years, Schwartz’s experience in legal justice regulation shines in Shielded. The guide is an element analysis and half historical past, and it’s stuffed with necessary case regulation, most of which the typical particular person gained’t have heard of. These necessary courtroom precedents decide how the police are allowed to have interaction with the general public, resembling whether or not or not police want a warrant to go looking you if you’re minding your small business strolling down the road. (They don’t.) But that is no legalese-filled tutorial treatise. It’s extremely participating as a result of Schwartz easily weaves the human story into every case she explains. After all, there’s a actual particular person behind each story of police misconduct. Someone was brutalized or their rights have been ignored, and this guide explains precisely how the police have been allowed to get away with it.
Although these legal guidelines have been in place for many years, Schwartz doesn’t consider that they’re unstoppable or that police misconduct will proceed to go unpunished indefinitely. In addition to dissecting the issue, she additionally gives concepts for options, resembling educating the general public on the failures of legal justice regulation and requiring the police to pay a portion of civil settlements. Shielded is a significant, well-researched and readable work that may open many discussions about this necessary social difficulty.
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