I recently appeared on the Scott Horton to talk about how federal courts created the doctrine of qualified immunity that now makes it almost impossible to hold police officers accountable for excessive force and other misconduct.
During the interview, Scott and I untangle the complex web of legal history that has given America the system known as qualified immunity, I also talk a little bit about why trusting federal courts to protect our rights is a bad strategy in general and suggest the old common law approach was superior because it didn’t rely on centralized legal doctrines. At the end of the interview, we talk a little bit about solutions. I actually miss the boat here a little bit. I suggest that the best path forward is congressional reform introduced by Justin Amash to end qualified immunity at the federal level. That would be good – but I failed to mention the possibility of reforms at the state level that could bypass the federal system altogether.
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