Supreme Court declines to hear cases over qualified immunity
cnbc.com
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I know it sounds counter intuitive, but I think getting rid of the line item veto has helped to cripple Congress even more. Because it used to absolved members and let them vote for something they didn't like, knowing it would not make it into law.
Just want to note that legislators are a little less at fault here than they normally are.
The most effective deterrent to "legislating from the bench" is to recall those Justices who did the legislating.
Neither party will do this, though—enacting reforms through the courts is far more efficient than passing difficult legislation through the House, Senate, and the Presidency (all of which can anger voters). Much better to let the courts do it, and give brave speeches to the media about "judicial overreach" when required to appease voters.
> Waiting on the courts to get around to it will not be fast enough, or may never come.
The current situation is working well for everyone with the power to change it (see above).
Judges as legislators violate this separation, undermining not only key protections on democratic integrity, but the legitimacy of the whole scheme, through its avoidance of that direct democratic accountability.
Note that excessive delegation from the legislature to the executive branch through agencies with rule-making power is also a separations-of-power concern, and there is special law around the procedures by which executive agency rule-making may take place. Another case is executive power being wielded by Congress: Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, argued this March and not yet decided, took on the problem that the head of the CFPB was not accountable to the President.
Power here is the ability of one group to direct/constrain the actions of another.. the judiciary, the executive and the legislature all exercise the same power.
The only thing "separation" achieves is a system of mutual antagonism which functions (poorly) as a system of accountability.
Here, congress at any point can redress "legislating from the bench" (ie., establishing legal precedent) by passing new law. If the judiciary ignores this law, then they can be removed from office.
I cannot see any circumstance here where the legislature has issues new law in redress for a judicial ruling and then the judiciary has gone on to ignore it.
What we're talking about here is when judges have simply "made up rules" where the law fails to provide answers. that is the role of the judiciary in a common law system!
It's what provides for reasonable standards of individual freedom which adapt to the age. rather than havign everyone legislataed by an infinite number of rules est. in 1701
It appears you are also a skeptic of the principle of Separation of Powers to begin with. You are, of course, not asked to accept that this is ideal. I will, however, ask that you accept that this structure was designed and codified into law to uphold that principle, and this is often at the root of (principled) objections when things are done your preferred way. This is a better place to start a conversation, rather than of celebrating your failure to understand (which is meant to imply that something does not make sense, but really says more about your own understanding.)
Imagine an American complaining: "Parliament is so confusing! What is all this drama about 'forming a government' and coalitions? Why can't they just elect a President directly?" The American may or may not have a meaningful point, but if they do have a point, this point is rather ill-served by the venue and the manner in which it is raised. The way in which you raise your objections here is similar.
The constitution itself places a court as its interpretive body: the power of the constitution is exercised by judges, explicitly mandated to interpret it.
Judicial power isn't some "secondary" feature over which congress is meant to preside. It is the primary mechanism of the constitutional order itself.
The american legal order is established, maintained and exercised by the judiciary. There is a mistaken view that Congress as a democratic body has more "legitimacy" and therefore that others exercising power are overstepping their mark. But the american constitution is not democratic, and has no high regard for democracy as the principle authorising source of power.
The founders were far more concerned to rest power in as narrow hands as possible, hence the supreme court and hence the electoral college. There is no such thing as "legislating from the bench" -- this is just judges exercising their constitutional role.
It's trivial to determine if the court has "legislated from the bench" though: do parties unrelated to the lawsuit in question immediately, after the decision, have to behave substantially differently? Do extremely large numbers of people have to behave substantially differently after the decision?
If they do, that's "legislating from the bench." That's literally the test.
When they don't, a decision only affects the people in the suit and similar situations going forward (precedent). That's just the normal, everyday action of the judiciary branch. It's still "policy" (broadly speaking), but it's not legislating.
In the most recent case, changing literally every Title IX program, overnight—as well as all employment scenarios nationwide—is clearly "legislating from the bench", since it a) applies with immediate effect to large numbers of people not party to the suit, and b) requires them to behave substantially differently than they had before the decision.
(I'm fine with "legislating from the bench", BTW, that's literally how Civil Rights legislation is intended to work. Congress passed responsibility to the courts, just like in other areas they've passed responsibility to the executive branch.)
> do parties unrelated to the lawsuit in question immediately, after the decision, have to behave substantially differently?
The court has not argued in their decision that Congress meant to provide these protections—they explicitly only argued that the law can be (re-)interpreted today as allowing it (using a broad interpretation). They fully admit that Congress at the time did not expect it to be interpreted this way.
That's the "legislating" part of "legislating from the bench": the actual legislators who voted on the original legislation did not intend to cause this behavioral change on ~200M Americans (at the time it was passed). 40 years later, the courts made the decision to legislate that behavior, from the bench.
Personally, I have to admire that kind of Chutzpah—no one will accuse today's court of lacking the will to power. That one of Trump's "conservative" justices wrote the decision is the icing on the cake. :)
> A policeman's lot is not so unhappy that he must choose between being charged with dereliction of duty if he does not arrest when he has probable cause, and being mulcted in damages if he does. Although the matter is not entirely free from doubt, the same consideration would seem to require excusing him from liability for acting under a statute that he reasonably believed to be valid but that was later held unconstitutional, on its face or as applied.
- https://www.leagle.com/decision/1967933386us5471842
I don't agree with this because ignorance of the law is not usually an excuse, but I imagine a majority of Congress might. However, the courts have gradually expanded "reasonably believed to be valid" to mean there must be "precisely factually on-point caselaw" determining the actions are unconstitutional. Sort of a frog in boiling water situation where a well-meaning member of Congress might not realize there was a problem until decades after the initial decision.
I think that mens rea[1] should be more broadly required. Our current system is such that virtually everyone is breaking the law and only enforcement and prosecutorial discretion protects us.
It's about understanding the consequences of your actions, nothing to do with knowledge of the law.
Currently, if an officer violates your rights on purpose, but there's no "precisely factually on-point caselaw" deciding what they did is unconstitutional, then they're immune from prosecution. They had mens rea, but it doesn't matter.
The top description on the Wikipedia article says Mens Rea is "the mental element of a person's intention to commit a crime; or knowledge that one's action or lack of action would cause a crime to be committed."
A text message saying "I'm gonna kill that guy" might be evidence of intent, but nobody ever says "I'm gonna kill that guy, thereby committing a felony under US law". How could you possibly prove that somebody knew an action would be illegal?
Would you allow the possibility that Wikipedia is wrong? I can't find any other reference that talks about knowledge of the law itself, and it logically doesn't make any sense. Also, "mens rea" itself is just a vague Latin phrase, so the only meaningful "definition" is how it's actually applied in the world.
I'm far from an expert but I think usually the "reasonable" keyword applies to such things in law. A "reasonable" person would know killing is wrong - and they'll say you mightn't, too bad, pay attention to society.
A "reasonable" person might not know some obscure tax law they broke by mistake so they have to make it right and pay it back, but not be punished too harshly otherwise. OTOH you'd expect an accountant to know so you could infer intent and they could be handled more sternly.
> Culpability; definitions of culpable mental states.
> The following definitions are applicable to this chapter:
> 1. "Intentionally." A person acts intentionally with respect to a result or to conduct described by a statute defining an offense when his conscious objective is to cause such result or to engage in such conduct.
> 2. "Knowingly." A person acts knowingly with respect to conduct or to a circumstance described by a statute defining an offense when he is aware that his conduct is of such nature or that such circumstance exists.
> 3. "Recklessly." A person acts recklessly with respect to a result or to a circumstance described by a statute defining an offense when he is aware of and consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that such result will occur or that such circumstance exists. The risk must be of such nature and degree that disregard thereof constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a reasonable person would observe in the situation. A person who creates such a risk but is unaware thereof solely by reason of voluntary intoxication also acts recklessly with respect thereto.
> 4. "Criminal negligence." A person acts with criminal negligence with respect to a result or to a circumstance described by a statute defining an offense when he fails to perceive a substantial and unjustifiable risk that such result will occur or that such circumstance exists. The risk must be of such nature and degree that the failure to perceive it constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would observe in the situation.
As you can see, none of these care whether the person knows that producing the result in question will break the law. This is far and away the norm for mens rea; requirements of knowledge of the law are vanishingly rare.
Note also that these are exactly the same categories as defined by the Model Penal Code. (Strict liability excluded.) The only change is that the word "purposefully" in the MPC was changed to "intentionally". So you're not even right that this is "a definition used in a statute that was never enacted".
The New York Penal Code doesn't attempt to define, or use, the term mens rea. Rather, it defines levels of "mental culpability" which are themselves referenced in the definitions of crimes. That is what mens rea means. It seems increasingly clear that you don't yourself know the meaning of the term, and you're certainly not more able to dictate a meaning than the state of New York is.
But feel free to compare this Australian legal advice:
> Mens rea offences are offences which, to be proven, must demonstrate an accused both committed the physical act (actus reus) as well as had a guilty mind – that is, the intention to commit the offence (mens rea).
（ https://www.gotocourt.com.au/criminal-law/vic/honest-and-rea... )
Australia treats the term mens rea in exactly the same way the state of New York does, by defining different levels of it and using those levels to define crimes. Compare these two crimes defined by the Crimes Act 1958 of Victoria:
> A person who, without lawful excuse, intentionally causes serious injury to another person is guilty of an indictable offence. Penalty: Level 3 imprisonment (20 years maximum). [I.4.16]
> A person who, without lawful excuse, recklessly causes serious injury to another person is guilty of an indictable offence. Penalty: Level 4 imprisonment (15 years maximum). [I.4.17]
This is to separate the following two scenarios since I think it'll be pretty clear to folks that the justification of punishment is different in the following:
1. A person pushes a button on a blank wall and someone is shot as a result.
2. A person squeezes the trigger of a firearm while that firearm is pointed at someone.
Other than the classic "Don't go around pushing big red buttons" the person in the first scenario is not morally culpable for their actions due to a lack of knowledge of what might follow from their button pushing. This is also the reason why actions like trying to shoot someone and having the gun jam tend not to be distinguished under the law from actually shooting someone (when such a situation can be identified). Your intent in squeezing the trigger was to shoot someone - the fact that the universe happened to intercede and prevent your action was something you could not foresee.
"On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that police stops are legal when the officer has a "reasonable suspicion" that a law is being broken—even if that law doesn't exist."
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/12/when-co...
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/08/03/how-the-suprem...
There's probably no better time than right now to get the support needed to pass a law eliminating QI. While we're at it, we can pass a law to replace Bivens rather than have analogous civil rights cases involving federal agents subject to the courts' whims.
The Courts invented qualified immunity, and the Courts should have done away with it, as well. Now, unfortunately, we will have to wait until we have the House, Senate, and Presidency controlled by the same party to fix what the Courts fucked up.
Herein lies the problem. The Courts aren't constitutionally permitted to invent much of anything.
The argument in dissent is that none of the members of either house or senate intended “sex” to include orientation or identity in 1964. Despite society having a different opinion on that today, redefining “sex” is not the courts prerogative.
I read the court's decision and the test they applied was "if this person's sex was the opposite would they not have been fired ? ". In both the cases of orientation and identity, the answer is a resounding yes. If someone that was gay was female, they wouldn't have been fired, same for a lesbian if she were a man. Also same for transgenders, if their sex was reversed, they would keep the job. I don't see how this is redefining "sex". The decision does not say that sex includes orientation or identity like you claim.
I don’t quite understand your response.
Maybe the same applies in the US too.
The legislature deals in broad hypothetical scenarios, for example perhaps "Putting anchovies on pizza shall be a crime punishable by death".
Courts must deal with an actuality with lots of specific facts that could not possibly have been anticipated by the legislature. For example are these particular fish anchovies? Was this item a pizza in the sense the legislature meant? Who exactly "put" the anchovies on the pizza if it happened automatically by action of a machine? The person who installed the machine? The person who loaded these specific anchovies into a hopper? Does it matter if that person knew the machine makes pizza?
It may also run into larger questions. Is the legislature really allowed to kill people for putting anchovies on their own pizza? If not, why not? Would it be allowed to fine them? All of this has the effect of "creating law" in order to dispense Justice, which is the whole reason we created courts.
Courts adjudicate the law, including common law. They cannot create new law.
If there was no law or common law establishing "qualified immunity" then the court cannot invent qualified immunity.
In fact, in this very article, one of the Justices agrees with me here:
> Thomas has argued that qualified immunity is essentially a creation of the justices — substituting “our own policy preferences” for that of Congress.
All in all, it's a failed system that requires someone to even have to utilize the supreme court to settle these types of matters. I don't believe the government can legitimately absolve itself from any liability, regardless of circumstance, that a private person is not absolved of. This would require actual change on a state and local level, but that's not a change that most people desire. They believe the state is benevolent, there's only a problem when it's a problem they (the public) face themselves.
That's the troublesome crux that bugged even Jefferson if I recall, that essentially those appointed for life judges through judicial review could single handedly shift the direction of policy in the nation.
For as much effort as was put in to constrain the Executive, the judiciary was a rather pronounced backdoor that I'm unsure that any amount of wrangling or re-architecture could resolve.
Though, I'd love to see an experiment where affordances were made for a "Supreme Jury" of the people to balance out the political strategic value of Supreme Court justice appointments to counter the long term provisioning of power, but I'm still unsure whether that would be stable in terms of maintaining any semblance of checks and balances.
Perhaps that Jury is vested with final discretion over acceptance of writs of certiorari, allowing the populace to direct the attention of the court, but still leaving the review to the appointees. I'm still not sure there's not an exploit there somewhere, but it would be an interesting way to essentially create an "anti-legislature", primarily tasked (given the general tone of Supreme Court appeals) of knocking law off the books. Then again, given I'm just spitballing, I'd want to sit down and give it a real hard think as to whether that would really do anything other than add in more complexity.
Indeed, you are correct. Judicial review is also unconstitutional.
This does indeed beg the question of resolving disputes of constitutionality. I don't believe the congress has the authority to compel the executive to do anything, other than their existing abilities to pass laws. The executive is free to enforce, or not enforce, whatever laws as they see fit, however they see fit. The court's role is to decide if the executive is appropriately applying the law in a particular case, as written by the congress.
There is no explicit or implicit need for judicial review. Why?
What is the purpose of the Constitution? To give limited, specific powers to the federal government. Who's giving these powers? The states.
It's the states' job to limit unconsitutional power grabs by the federal government. How do they do that? Well, both houses of congress are elected by people of each state, not nationally. We can also dive down the rabbit hole of the 17th amendment.
Crucially, the executive is elected by a body appointed by each state. In it's current form, the states have adopted a system where the electors are appointed based on a state's popular vote. This needn't be the case.
Finally, there's the question of enforcement. For much of the early history of the US, states were tasked with enforcing federal laws. A very prominent example of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Slave_Act_of_1850#Nul...
This brings us to the final line of defense against unconstitutional acts: nullification. The entire reason the US has a trial by jury system is to judge the law, not the facts. There's no room for a judge to interpret whether a law is fair, or constitutional. Only for them to preside over the trial and adjudicate whether or not the state is applying law, not adjudicating the law themselves.
Is this a perfect system? No, but it's the one we used to have, and unsurprisingly, it's better than the one we have now.
Congress has to do this so that Courts can rely on law to determine if an offense occurred. The problem we face is that many in Congress will want to lump into a much larger bill with some very untenable items knowing that as such it cannot pass. This is called virtue signaling which has been practiced far too often by Congress.
One simple bill, up and down. https://amash.house.gov/media/press-releases/amash-pressley-...
There's only one party preventing discussion or a vote. This both-sides-are-the-same rhetoric is both patently false and a disservice to the American public.
Last I checked, the Democrats are in charge of virtually all of the cities where this is happening, as well as most of the states. No reason this can't get done at the state and local levels.
If QI was a law, the supremacy clause would certainly apply.
But QI is not a law, however it is a policy created by the courts based on federal law. It’s not clear to me whether the supremacy clause applies here, but I suspect it does.
Same with the Republican Party. So I have no idea which party you are referring to that has "caught up with reality". Certainly there's a segment of mostly-Democratic voters who oppose QI, but... they aren't represented among leadership at all.
I would personally count that as leadership not supporting QI.
Just like card check. You'll get tax rebates on medical procedures following officer involved incidents if your lucky.
The GOP isn't obstructing the Democrat agenda--the American people are.
This was a somewhat-naive experiment in vote distribution that has been hopelessly gamed by the GOP and needs to be put to rest.
Your point seems to be that some hypothetical alternative government would give Democrats more power, so the GOP, which controls the real government, is obstructing the will of the people... as it would be represented in that hypothetical system? This is an equally bizarre point. If Dems want to pass their agenda, the should concentrate on running candidates that can win according to the rules that they're stuck with. Or even changing the rules via Constitutional Amendment. Bellyaching about the rules is just sour grapes.
>This was a somewhat-naive experiment in vote distribution that has been hopelessly gamed by the GOP and needs to be put to rest.
I'm not sure that you understand the narrow margin by which the United States came into existence. Without these 'somewhat naive' mechanisms, small states would not have joined the Union and there would be no United States.
https://i.redd.it/qo1c2vtmu8s21.jpg
What a joke of a democracy we collectively pretend to have.
Bellyaching about the rules is necessary to get people onboard with the idea that maybe the Constitution should be changed. That it's not a perfect religious artifact.
> I'm not sure that you understand the narrow margin by which the United States came into existence. Without these 'somewhat naive' mechanisms, small states would not have joined the Union and there would be no United States.
I'm not sure why I'm supposed to be convinced that this would've been such a worse outcome.
> The GOP controls the Executive branch and half of the Legislative--2/3 of the lawmaking machinery of the federal government.
You're right that it is misleading (and potentially dangerous) to think of the Executive branch as part of the "lawmaking machinery of the federal government", but there is such a thing as a presidential veto, so it's not like the Electoral College is completely irrelevant in terms of Congress's power to create legislation.
H.R. 1759: BRIDGE for Workers Act, passed House 393-23.
H.R. 2590: DHS Overseas Personnel Enhancement Act of 2019, passed House 394-2.
H.R. 2609: DHS Acquisition Review Board Act of 2019, passed House 419-0.
H.R. 769: Counterterrorism Advisory Board Act of 2019, passed House 414-12.
H.R. 3050: Expanding Investment in Small Businesses Act of 2019, passed House 417-2.
H.R. 4407: SCORE for Small Business Act of 2019, passed House 389-8.
H.R. 499: Service-Disabled Veterans Small Business Continuation Act, passed House 423-0.
H.R. 596: Crimea Annexation Non-recognition Act, passed House 427-1.
H.R. 1593: CLASS Act of 2019, passed House 384-18.
Of course I can't say for sure that any of those would pass if allowed to come up for a vote in the Senate. Those all could be issues where GOP Representatives and GOP Senators are so far out of alignment that they pass with overwhelming GOP support in the House but would get at most a couple GOP Senators behind them.
"Don't look here: political dynasties and corrupt politicians"
Based upon that clarification is your point still relevant and if so can you explain it?
Congress has sent 300+ bills to the Senate and McConnell wont even debate them.
Half the Legislature is doing something. The other half is stalling.
that's an issue, but the linchpin is the influence of money in politics along with a voting system that tends toward 2 parties. legislators spend much more time chasing dollars than considering legislation, and hewing to party lines than independent thought. 'politician' is too much of a career rather than a duty.
https://www.axios.com/tim-scott-police-reform-bill-qualified...
Currently our system depends on legislating in the executive (EOs & regulatory bodies like the FDA given the power of law) and in the legislature. To my eye this has been an utter disaster; as it has both decoupled the legislating process from voting, and crippled the one deliberative body that citizens have some control over.
I think having non-effective legislators and having a powerful executive and judicial branch is an effective method to remove citizen control of government. It is on purpose.
I’m aware of this, I’m just disclosing my own general stance for rhetorical effect.
> It is on purpose
I don’t think we got here on purpose; I think we got here on accident. History is just too full of random turns and twists caused by external events and opposing parties for there to often be a grand plan to anything; dumb luck explains a lot of things.
Now that we’re here, I do believe that the lack of any effective solutions is probably deliberate. The current people in power gain far too much from the status quo to actually offer up meaningful reforms.
As far as I can see from their behavior, the conservatives are just as happy not having the responsibility as anyone else; most of their talk about "legislation from the bench" and "overreaching regulations" has been little more than attacks on abortion rights, same-sex marriage, and so on. Further, when they have had the opportunity, they have been completely unable to legislate, even so far as to reverse previous legislation that they hate.
If the FCC wants to, say, lower the minimum required channel separation in a particular band, that too would need a passed bill and a Presidential signature?
I doubt that that is practical.
Currently the FDA has the unchecked power to create federal felonies, because failure to comply with FDA regulations is a felony.
I’m sure most people agree that having a FDA is good, as is having an enforcement mechanism. But giving an unelected member of the executive branch the ability to effectively legislate alone is kind of a crazy power to leave totally unchecked.
This power is exactly what creates the CrimeADay twitter feed, since these federal regulations are both insanely minute and often not very well thought out. My favorite example is that it’s a felony to sell shredded cream cheese.
https://twitter.com/CrimeADay/status/812119132326006785?s=20
I expect it might be possible to challenge the rule against grated cream cheese even if it's within the scope of the FDAs authority if the rule doesn't serve any legitimate purpose.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_Procedure_Act_(...
You can use the courts as a redress against bad regulations, but you have significantly less input into what generates those regulations, especially since the FDA is not a deliberative body.
This is false.
The FDA can only issue regulations within the specific statutory authority given to it by Congress.
Moreover, a violation of an FDA regulation is not a felony. At best, the FDA can refer a case to the Justice Department for an investigation of whether federal laws were violated when violating the regulation. In many cases, it is possible to violate a regulation without violating the law authorizing that regulation. In others, violating the regulation is synonymous with violating the statute because the regulation just restates the statute.
I’m not saying that the FDA has unlimited regulatory authority, they could not for example regulate financial securities, but they have an unchecked authority. This is subtly different.
One party has been trying to legislate—whether you happen to agree with their legislative priorities or not—and the other party has been absolutely wrecking the established rules and customs of the Senate to avoid legislating. We all know which is which.
So if you genuinely want legislators to do their damn jobs, spread the word to everyone you know to vote out the Republican do-nothings this fall.
Yes, Democrats might have occasionally pushed things a bit in previous Congresses, but I know for a fact that you cannot point to anything Democrats have ever done that's as egregious as Republicans actively colluding to a) prevent a sitting President from being allowed to appoint a new Supreme Court Justice to the bench, or b) prevent any legislation the opposing party proposes from being brought to the floor in any way, shape, or form for years, purely for political gain.
It also hasn't been used to anywhere near the same frequency.
The data demonstrates pretty clearly that whomever holds control of both houses of congress, gets bills passed, regardless of which party, and even usually regardless of which party holds the presidency.
This effectively grants the Senate majority leader and House speaker veto power over any legislation. Even if the rest of the body supports the bill, the leader of the house can just kill it by refusing to bring it up for a vote.
I'm not sure whether this practice happens because the leader of the bodies don't want it to pass, or there's not enough floor time to bring it up, or if these bills are ultimately tucked into an omnibus package and passed into law that way.
The good news is that if people and their legislators truly care about this issue, they can demand that leaders allow votes as a condition for their support. The system is bad right now, but it can be changed.
Because of the way the Senate is structured with two representatives per state regardless of the population, that gives the less populous flyover states and the “Bible Belt” way more power than their population would entitle they to.
Qualified immunity can prevent the fallback option of suing a cop that isn't charged with a crime. But we're underreaching if we focus on the fallback instead of the primary issue of holding people accountable for crimes.
If you believe the experts that are well-versed in this area, this is not how it works in practice. The Wikipedia article covers a lot of the controversy around this doctrine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity#Objections_...
Here is an example of a man in Grand Rapids, Michigan, who was brutally assaulted by undercover officers because they believed he was somebody else. Take a look at how difficult it has been for him to get any recourse for a blatantly obvious abuse of power (6 years and counting): https://twitter.com/AaronParseghian/status/12701818156644966...
The lack of criminal prosecutions is more of an indication that District Attorneys aren't doing their job (or that the reality of their job is that they are disincentivized from prosecuting criminal cops).
But the complaint about how qualified immunity is applied doesn't change the bigger issue that those cops in your example beat up someone and were acquitted of assault. This is focusing on how the fallback lawsuit was prevented by qualified immunity instead of the primary issue that those cops should have gone to jail.
One way to actually fix the problem is external investigation of police complaints and the power to press charges separate from the DA. The vast majority of the time the people investigating a police shooting work in the same building as the shooters, and are often police themselves. Then the DA, which works with the police on most of their cases, ends up being the one that has to prosecute them. These should both be considered conflicts of interest. We need people that aren't friends with the cops to have the power to do something. The investigators should be limited to bringing criminal charges to police that must be tried in court to prevent abuses of their power (otherwise we risk a situation of "who watches the watchmen of the watchmen"). The idea of special prosecutors exists, but for some reason isn't applied to police matters.
Police unions are a problem now, but only because they have the power to fight a police chief over employment terms and threaten to strike. They would not be able to fight the prosecutor from an external organization. Let them fight the police chief over administrative actions and discipline for minor violations all they want (that's what unions are for) as long as punishment for crimes is handled by someone else. This is exactly how it works with every other union- they can fight employers on all sorts of matters, but they don't get a say once a member commits a crime, and police unions should be the same.
Also, with police matters, a lack of evidence should be viewed as suspicious, and possibly considered as supporting evidence for a complaint. The police should wear cameras but they shouldn't manage the recordings. Body cameras should be allowed to be turned off to deal with sensitive issues, but those occasions should be limited and reviewable. If a cop is about to go talk to a rape victim, then the footage leading up that point should be reviewed. If a body camera was turned off when someone filed a complaint about assault, it should be pretty easy to look at the footage leading up to that point and determine if the camera was turned off for an appropriate reason, or if the cop turned the camera off so they could crack some skulls without being recorded. Excuses like "I forgot to turn my camera back on" can be handled with indicator lights and audible tones or having the camera turn back on after a while. Excuses like "my camera stopped working" can be checked to see if the police officer submitted a service request.
None of these issues are controversial. The controversial part is that it costs money to set up an oversight investigation. Usually a politician running with a platform like this is doomed to lose an election because they are talking about raising taxes and they won't have the support of the police union. But if there were ever a time to get this implemented it would be now.
Secondly, "the power to press charges separate from the DA"--this is a stronger form of getting rid of qualified immunity. We already have the power to file "civil" suits, and qualified immunity removes that power in the case of e.g. police. Giving people the power to file criminal charges themselves would be a huge deal. Maybe it is the right thing ultimately, but I think it's obvious how it could be abused; an abusive billionaire could legally threaten their opponents with imprisonment (or worse).
Thirdly, thinking that bodycam reform would be any kind of useful measure, is quite naive, when you look at how many of these recent abuses are recorded on independent cameras, with the police fully aware they are being recorded, and yet they still act as they do, knowing they have this "qualified immunity" to protect them.
I'm not saying that you're completely wrong; some of these reforms may help things a bit. But they don't strike at the root of the issue, and the ship for seeing if more moderate reforms will work has already sailed. The police and cities etc have had literally decades to clean up their act, and in cities across America, they have failed. Time's up.
So it looks like the institutions you are alluding to already exist, they probably need to be empowered more somehow.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_police_oversight_agen...
And if you think judges research it all day in their chmabers have a poor understanding of the law, why do you expect police officers in the middle of a violent confrontation to have a better understanding?
People don't appreciate how many frivolous lawsuits go on currently. Imagine getting sued out of your home because some rich asshole you arrested decided to sue you personally.
https://www.nyulawreview.org/issues/volume-89-number-3/polic...
> But we're underreaching if we focus on the fallback instead of the primary issue of holding people accountable for crimes.
This is a false dichotomy; we can want both at the same time.
This implies that our legal system holds people responsible for honest mistakes. Our legal system is entirely prepared for these situations without qualified immunity. Qualified immunity exists only to shield people from breaking laws.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity#:~:text=Cri....
In a legal system where the average person is held responsible for an honest mistake, I think it is necessary for government agents to be held to the same standard.
>Qualified immunity already doesn't protect you if you knowingly break the law
Given how prosecutors so often refuse to hold cops accountable, qualified immunity prevents seeking justice through the last remaining system in place.
>But we're underreaching if we focus on the fallback instead of the primary issue of holding people accountable for crimes.
This is letting perfect become the enemy of better.
Employees are generally shielded from this.
If you want to open it up liability against all workers, then that's a major setback for worker rights.
If you only want to do this for police officers... well, then that's so unfair, no one is going to become a police officer.
https://www.inc.com/articles/1999/11/15396.html
So what people are demanding here would set police officers specifically, in a different lesser class than the general public.
An alternative is to have it so police have no ability to detail, imprison, or use forced against anyone that you or I also don't have (and this would also extent to rights to be armed in places you or I don't have rights to be armed, and other similar rights).
“There likely is no basis for the objective inquiry into clearly established law that our modern cases prescribe... Leading treatises from the second half of the 19th century and case law until the 1980s contain no support for this ‘clearly established law’ test.”
Is it true that he was the only dissenter, though? Sotomayor has previously expressed dissent to the doctrine. No one wrote a majority opinion for not taking the appeal; I suppose other justices could have signed on to the dissent, but I guess I don't know how often petition refusals get written opinions at all.
I get the impression these decision are mostly made behind closed doors.
My guess is that many of the justices thought that granting certiorari at a critical moment in the public debate might provide a convenient excuse for Congress to sit on its hands. Sotomayor and Ginsburg have both previously signaled their willingness to reexamine the precedent, yet neither wrote a dissent. If Congress does nothing I'd expect SCOTUS to revisit the issue in the next couple of years.
It's essentially the question of who polices the police, and their police unions across the country play a huge role in the fallout from cases where police have crossed the line. Administrative leave with pay and eventual reinstatement is not an acceptable form of accountability in the US.
Whether it's a judicial decision or legislative change I don't know, but I'm glad police brutality is getting the attention it deserves (for now).
Here's one example case, which the Supreme Court just declined to hear: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/19-679/123466/2019...
> Officer Vickers and several other police officers pursued a criminal suspect into Amy Corbitt’s yard. Six children, including Corbitt’s ten-year-old son, SDC, were at play. Vickers and his fellow officers ordered the children—at gunpoint—to lie on the ground, face-down. The children complied. Meanwhile, the unarmed criminal suspect was readily compliant with the officers.
> While holding the children on the ground, weapons drawn, Vickers fired his gun twice at Corbitt’s pet dog. He missed the dog both times. The second time he fired, Vickers shot SDC in the back of the knee, seriously injuring him. SDC, still lying face down on the ground at Vickers’ order, was eighteen inches away from Vickers.
> Corbitt filed this suit, alleging that Vickers violated SDC’s constitutional rights. In particular, Corbitt alleged that, because Vickers faced no threat, his use of deadly force was unreasonable. Vickers sought dismissal, asserting qualified immunity. The district court denied Vickers’ motion, and Vickers took an interlocutory appeal. The Eleventh Circuit, holding that the plaintiff is obligated to plead around qualified immunity, concluded that the complaint failed to establish that qualified immunity is inapplicable.
Note that these are the facts as described by the court itself, not the petitioner's lawyers. Since there is no case on the record establishing that these exact actions are unconstitutional, qualified immunity means the court must assume the officer was acting in good faith and didn't know that shooting at children and a pet dog for no reason is wrong.
Edit - Here's another one of the cases the court just declined to hear: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/19-899/128836/2020...
> QUESTION PRESENTED
> Whether an officer who has consent to “get inside” a house but instead destroys it from the outside is entitled to qualified immunity in the absence of precisely factually on-point caselaw.
I encourage you to read the case, but basically, the petitioner gave the police her keys and consent to go into her house to look for a suspect (after being threatened with arrest for "harboring a fugitive"). Instead, the police bombarded the house with tear gas grenades, destroying it and almost everything inside. The suspect was not there, and the police did not have any reason to believe he was. The petitioner and her children were homeless for two months, and were offered a hotel room for 3 weeks and $900 as compensation.
> The panel majority found that the officers were entitled to qualified immunity on the scope-of-consent question because “no Supreme Court or Ninth Circuit case clearly established, as of August 2014, that Defendants exceeded the scope of consent” when they took West’s permission to “get inside” her house as permission to bombard and destroy it. App. 13. After all, the majority reasoned, the officers “did ‘get inside’ [her] house, first with objects and later with people.” Ibid.
If you can basically do whatever you want with no repercussions, it's no wonder.
> “Qualified immunity means that government officials can get away with violating your rights as long as they violate them in a way nobody thought of before,” said IJ Attorney Joshua Windham.
https://ij.org/press-release/institute-for-justice-asks-u-s-...
QI protects officers from their personal actions. So QI is nothing like the limited liability provided by forming a corporaton or llc.
It seems to me we have to fix all of these things. QI has to be disestablished as a legal doctrine or at least curtailed to be in line with how other professions get treated in good-faith doctrine. The Congress has to act to establish federal police use of force standards, require the DOJ to enforce them, strip police of military assets, and outlaw police union action on use of force matters and related disciplinary actions. And the states have to act to provide independent internal affairs prosecutors who (as you mention) don't hold a conflict of interest any time they pursue criminal charges against police.
Maybe in this case the SC acted in a calculated way to spur the Congress to act and allow it to be scrutinized in an election year, or felt the case was otherwise unsuitable. But the SC will have to face QI later anyway. The Thomas dissent (https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/061520zor_f2..., search for "Baxter") lays out the reasons why.
So perhaps instead of abusing civil law for that, there should be a way for private prosecution of criminal law?
I remember reading something along the lines of "it's because SCOTUS believes the legislature needs to act" rather than "it's because the SCOTUS thinks Qualified Immunity is fine and dandy" but I'd love to hear some informed opinions.
The SC made up modern QI out of thin air on their own, so this feels like a cop-out.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_overruled_United_Sta...
I see what you did there.
So there's not really anything new, it's just more newsworthy because of the current societal context. It's the same bad precedent that they've been using for decades, and they're denying these cases with the unstated logic "we already decided this issue and you haven't convinced us we need to revisit it."
It's not a bad precedent, it's a precedent interpreting a bad law. It's on congress to write laws. Congress could change this law any time they want. The court can only interpret law, they can't reverse a law just because a majority of people don't like it.
If the law hasn't changed since the last time they heard the case, there's no point in them hearing any more cases because there is nothing new to discuss from a legal standpoint.
There's an election in November in case anyone's interested.
The Supreme Court invented Qualified Immunity[1].
The law before that was very clear[2]:
"The Civil Rights Act of 1871 is a federal statute, numbered 42 U.S.C. § 1983, that allows people to sue the government for civil rights violations. It applies when someone acting 'under color of' state-level or local law has deprived a person of rights created by the U.S. Constitution or federal statutes."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity#History_and...
[2] https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/what-is-a-section-19...
Also, QI is also in various State statutes of Tort law that protects workers from litigation when acting as employees of any corporation.
> A policeman's lot is not so unhappy that he must choose between being charged with dereliction of duty if he does not arrest when he has probable cause, and being mulcted in damages if he does. Although the matter is not entirely free from doubt, the same consideration would seem to require excusing him from liability for acting under a statute that he reasonably believed to be valid but that was later held unconstitutional, on its face or as applied.
- https://www.leagle.com/decision/1967933386us5471842
There is no law cited, it was just the justices' gut feeling. Courts since then have gradually expanded "reasonably believed to be valid" to mean there must be "precisely factually on-point caselaw" determining the actions are unconstitutional.
Edit: I encourage you to read more about the Supreme Court, it seems like you're not familiar with a lot of its history or why it exists.
> The court can only interpret law, they can't reverse a law just because a majority of people don't like it.
It absolutely can reverse a law. Striking down unconstitutional laws is one of the main reasons it exists.
> If the law hasn't changed since the last time they heard the case, there's no point in them hearing any more cases because there is nothing new to discuss from a legal standpoint.
That is a frequent excuse, but consider two unanimous decisions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pace_v._Alabama: a unanimous decision ruling that a law against interracial marriage is constitutional.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia: a unanimous decision ruling that a law against interracial marriage is unconstitutional.
The 14th amendment did not change in between these two cases, and the facts of the cases were effectively the same.
Secondly, you should flesh out your description of what qualified immunity is so people have an understanding of what being for or against it really means. Please feel free to use parts of the explanation I posted here previously:
Lets say you want to build a deck. You put together the plans, take them
to the planning commission, and they rightfully reject it for being
structurally unsound.
Qualified immunity is what prevents you from personally suing each member
of the planning commission to pressure them in to reversing their decision.
Think of it like the legal system throwing an exception, we aren't even
going to consider this because your beef is with the city not an individual
employee.
Police have qualified immunity because otherwise they would face personal
lawsuits every time they wrote a rich guy a speeding ticket, or a convicted
murderer has nothing better to do but get his law degree in prison.
Qualified immunity does not protect civil servants from criminal charges,
or when a disinterested party (someone who does not stand to benefit from
the case, say the ACLU or NAACP) files suit.This is always a cop out because it is the job of the SCOTUS to act as check on legislation, and to act when it doesn't.
I think this is actually a good thing, despite the headline, for two reasons:
1 - It forces Congress to do this (and it's their job to write the rules, not SCOTUS)
2 - By forcing Congress to write the law, they will have to address all of the issues around it, which might allow for some interesting things that would never have come from a SCOTUS decision.
For instance, maybe Qualified Immunity automatically goes away if you don't have your chest camera on.
Maybe you keep Qualified Immunity if your chest camera is on, and your actions have been confirmed by an independent board as lawful.
There are lots of variants, and I only illustrated two of them. Of course, it's Congress, so they can mess this up as much as anything, but at least they will get the input of 535 members (and from constituents) when crafting the approach.
This likely will never happen. Just outright, it won't happen. I'm not saying we should rely on courts for legislation, but, if one of the last release valves for crises won't let up, it won't happen. The gridlock is insurmountable.
When will the voices of reason prevail?
This is the first time I've ever done anything remotely political beyond voting but was so incredulous at the broad scope of this judicial policy and it's impact on removing accountability from police misconduct that I had to do something.
If you'd like to help in any way on this -- contact me (see profile).
To help promote the cause you can add some quotes by Clarence Thomas to help promote the cause. He chided the other supreme court members for not supporting reviewing it.
> I continue to have strong doubts about our §1983 qualified immunity doctrine. Given the importance of this question, I would grant the petition for certiorari. - Clarence Thomas
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-1287_09m1.pdf
https://lawandcrime.com/supreme-court/clarence-thomas-chides...
Edit: looks like you included his and other supporters pictures already which is cool
“... cases that asked the court to revisit a doctrine which shields police from lawsuits for conduct that does not involve a “clearly established” violation of the law.”
"... cases that asked the court to revisit the existing doctrine. This doctrine protected police from lawsuits concerning police conduct, where their conduct didn't involve an obvious crime."
The Court was asked to review cases. Those cases relate to a doctrine known as qualified immunity.
...a doctrine which shields police from lawsuits...
Qualified immunity shields government officials (police, in this case) from civil lawsuits (suing for damages - officials can still be held criminally accountable).
...conduct that does not involve a “clearly established” violation of the law...
The QI only applies when there is not a "clearly established" violation of the law.
That last phrase is the real killer. Courts require the aggrieved party to cite previous cases with EXACTLY the same set of facts. Of course, no two cases are exactly the same, so the courts have effectively given police officers blanket immunity to civil claims...
So... why did the Court decline?
However, the order was unsigned, so we will probably never know.
It seems to me like a simple requirement to make legislators be explicit why a law is on the books would be of tremendous service to the public, the judges, and others involved. And it would cost almost nothing (it does not take a long time to write up a "commit message" of why a "code change" is happening).
They typically only hear cases where the regional appellate courts have differed significantly on interpretation of the law.
I'm not aware of the lower courts have much disagreement here. They almost all afford broad QI to police officers.
Wow, I really have no rebuttable to that. We clearly view government and systems of justice very different
[parent comment asked for a merge, now edited]
Also, it's not a dupe. You submitted a different article.
The oldest entry in /newest is now at 19 minutes ago, your submission was two hours ago. Nobody is going to stumble upon it anymore.
I get it. You feel the karma "belongs" to you, because you were faster to find out about that decision. But that's not how it works here. Sometimes you're lucky, but very often you're not.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23346089
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
You definitely don't? I literally even said feel free to get rid of the one I posted somehow. My thinking was some people might repost the same link I posted and it might surface later when it gets more votes, or they might do that and leave comments when they land on that one, but I have no idea, I can't predict the future. If it's not an issue then it's not an issue. Why are you making such a big deal out of this and making it a personal issue about me? I don't know why you seem to be trying to start a fight about this here.