This encyclopedia entry provides an overview of law governing the police. As it notes, police officers are granted immense authority by the state to impose harm. The problem of policing the police is how to regulate police officers and departments to protect individual liberty and minimize the social costs the police impose while allowing them to do what is necessary to achieve the ends of policing: reducing fear, promoting civil order, and pursuing criminal justice. Constitutional law provides the most well-known check on police conduct. In addition, many other federal, state, and local statutes, constitutional provisions, court decisions, and administrative regulations also govern the police. Since federal constitutional law cannot alone ensure that the benefits of policing are worth the harms it imposes, this participation by other government actors is essential to ensure adequate regulation of the police. However, the laws that presently govern the police are not tailored to balance the individual and societal interests at stake when police officers act, they lack coordination, and responsibility for regulating the police is haphazardly allocated. As a result, the present array of laws that polices American policing does not promote law enforcement that is maximally effective and protective of civil rights.
For the over half-million people currently homeless in the United States, the U.S. Constitution has historically provided little help: it is strongly...
Gradualism should have won out in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, exerting gravitational influence on the majority and dissenters alike. In general...
On December 15, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued its decision in Illumina, Inc. v. FTC. Although the court vacated and...
On January 17, the Supreme Court heard arguments in what are potentially the most significant commercial law cases of the last decade. In the...
During times of crisis, governments often consider policies that may promote safety, but that would require overstepping constitutionally protected...
This casebook aspires to help students understand and think systematically about the techniques of statutory interpretation. It blends exposition with...
On January 1, 2022, the most radical change to the American jury in at least thirty-five years occurred in Arizona: peremptory strikes, long a feature...
In an era defined by partisan rifts and government gridlock, many celebrate the rare issues that prompt bipartisan consensus. But extreme consensus...
Working hand-in-hand with the private sector, largely in a regulatory vacuum, policing agencies at the federal, state, and local level are acquiring...
The decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard [SFFA], invalidating the use of race in college admissions, reignites...
Berryessa et al. (2022) consider how prior experience as a criminal prosecutor may influence judicial behaviour, but their concerns about prior...
For several days, former President Donald Trump and his 18 co-defendants in a Georgia election interference case trickled into the Fulton County Jail...
Virginia adopted a risk assessment to help determine sentencing for sex offenders. It was incorporated as a one-way ratchet toward higher sentences...
The 1968 Fair Housing Act required local government recipients of federal money to take meaningful actions to affirmatively further fair housing (AFFH...
Courts routinely use low cash bail as a financial incentive to ensure that released defendants appear in court and abstain from crime. This can create...
We examined how the presentation of risk assessment results and the race of the person charged affected pretrial court actors’ recommendations to...
In our increasingly polarized society, claims that prosecutions are politically motivated, racially motivated, or just plain arbitrary are more common...