Why Cato Took on Qualified Immunity

Clark NeilyOn May 15th, the Supreme Court will make a momentous decision: Whether to take the first step towards ending our failed experiment with near ‐​zero accountability for law enforcement. The cornerstone of that policy is a judge ‐​made legal doctrine called qualified immunity, and the time has come to abandon it.As ably explained by my colleague Jay Schweikert in multipleop ‐​eds andblog posts, there are many reasons why SCOTUS should grant certiorari in one or more of the dozen qualified ‐​immunity cases going to conference ten days from now. In this post, I want to explain why Cato ’s Project on Criminal Justice chose to make the elimination of qualified immunity one of its top priorities, and why we ’ve devoted more than half our resources to waging that battle since I took over the department three years ago.On March 1, 2018, Cato held a forum with law professor Will Baude, author of thedefinitive article on the historical and textual illegitimacy of qualified immunity; Judge Lynn Adelman, one of the doctrine ’s leading judicial critics; Andrew Pincus, a former Assistant to the Solicitor General and fierce opponent of qualified immunity; and Vic Glasberg, a prominent civil rights attorney. We noted that the forum “mark[ed] the beginning of Cato’s campaign to challenge and roll back qualified immunity,” a goal we ’ve been laser‐​focused on ever since. But why?In a&nbs...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs