Leading Scholars and Most Diverse Amici Ever Assembled File Briefs Challenging Qualified Immunity

I ’vepreviously blogged about  Allah v. Milling, a case in which a  pretrial detainee was kept in extreme solitary confinement for nearly seven months, for no legitimate reason, and subsequently brought a civil-rights lawsuit against the prison officials responsible. Although every single judge in Mr. Allah’s case agreed that these defendants violated his consti tutional rights, asplit panel of the Second Circuit said they could not be held liable, all because there wasn’t any prior case addressing the “particular practice” used by this prison. Cato filed anamicus brief in support of Mr. Allah ’s cert pertition, which explicitly asks the Supreme Court to reconsiderqualified immunity—a judge-made doctrine, at odds with the text and history of Section 1983, which regularly allows public officials to escape accountability for this kind of unlawful misconduct.Ialso blogged about how, on June 11th, the Supreme Court called for a response to the cert petition, indicating that the Court has at least some interest in the case.  The call for a response also triggered 30 days for additional amicus briefs, and over the last month, Cato has been coordinating the drafting and filing of two such briefs—one on behalf of a group ofleading qualified immunity scholars (detailing the many recent academic criticisms of the doctrine), and the other on behalf of an incredibly broad range of fifteen public interest and advocacy groups concerned with civil rights and police acco...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs